^,.i- 



LIBP iR OF CONGRESS. 



UMTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE VIKING, 



GUY, 



LEGEND OV THE MOXAHALA, 



AND OTHER POEMS. 



BY / 

CHARLES EDGAR SPENCER. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPriNCOTT & CO 

I 8 78. 




^ 






Copyright, 1878, by Charles Edgak Spencer. 



DEDICATION. 



TO MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER. 

If aught of beauty, truth, lives in my song, — 
Caught from the mystic human heart, the blaze 
Of summer suns, the forest's dreamy ways. 
My life's sad days as swift they ebb along. 

Or aught beside in Nature's wondrous throng, — 
Worthy or of remembrance or of praise ; 
My love would here transfer the lowly bays 
And twine them on the brows where they belong : 

For where my heart is, surely, there should be 

These fragments of my heart, with all their dower 
Receive them, then, though humble as the flower 

And moss of hidden dells ; and they, to me. 
Shall thus become a treasure far above 
All price, — the tokens of my love — my love. 



CONTENTS. 





PAGE 


Dedication 


3 


The Viking. 




Advertisement 


9 


Prologue 


• 13 


Guy. 




Part the First 


• 43 


Part the Second 


• 72 


Part the Third 


. 102 


Legend of the Moxahala. 




Preface 


• 133 


I. The War-Party 


• 137 


II. The Indian-Fighter and his Cabin . 


• 143 


III. His Youth 


• 151 


IV. His Home near Seneca Lake 


. 160 


V. The Last Conflict 


. 170 


Olela: a Wanderer's Vision of Peace 


. 179 


Miscellaneous Poems 




Ouranopetes 


• 195 


Lincohi : An Ode 


■ 203 


Soliloquy of One returned to the Scenes of his 


Child- 


hood 


. 206 


An Hour of Slumber 


. 211 



CONTENTS. 



Hymn to the Ocean 

Summer Days 

Hymn to the Incomprehensible 

The Aztec Maiden 

A Dream .... 

Written on the Hudson 

The Angel of Song 

Night .... 

Songs and Ballads. 

Thistle Seeds .... 

Little Nell, the Pride of the School 

On the Recovery of a Proud yet Beautiful Young Lady 

" I Think Aye of Thee" . 

A Picture .... 

Hope ..... 

The Evening Paper 

Song ... 

Maid of the Mohawk . 

" Ah, now the Song is Flown" 

Sir Tristram's Song to Queen Isoude . 

A Lover's Love- Ballad ..... 
Sonnets. 

On a Deserted Cottage in the Alleghany Mountains 

On the Death of Ada 

On Reading Shelley . 

Adieu to Life, from the German of Korner . 

To 

On a Favorite Cat named Don Juan 
Notes 



THE VIKING. 



Here is the Quene of Faerie, 
With harpe, and pipe, and simphonie. 
Dwelling in this place." 

Chaucer's Rime of Sire Thopas. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



This tale is founded on the old Norse super- 
stition that the cataract of Voring Foss is haunted 
by water-spirits, that fascinate those who view the 
waterfall, and tempt them to leap over the giddy 
brink. Brace, describing this the most beautiful 
of all the cataracts of Norway, says : — 

" The water comes silent, swift, with hardly a 
foam, to the ledge and then makes its quick leap 
of eight hundred and fifty feet into the abyss 
below; first it is foam, then spray, then beautiful 
descending wreaths of silvery mist, whose inter- 
twining and changing shapes, quick appearing and 
vanishing in a thousand fantastic figures, one can 
watch by the hour, and fancy all manner of witch- 
ing Norse Noke and water-spirits. The grandeur 
is more given by the great depth and the worn 

2 9 



lO ADVERTISEMENT. 

walls of mighty rocks below than by the Fall 
itself. Yet even the depth you do not appreciate 
till you throw a stone into the chasm, and count 
by your watch the time of descent. One can 
understand, in such places, the Norsk supersti- 
tions of the Noke — the water-spirits, who fascinate 
and tempt in the beholder. The continuous rush 
of waters, the roar below, the dancing, fascinating 
mist-wreaths put you into a dream, so that you 
can hardly force yourself to rise." 

Bayard Taylor says of the same waterfall : — 
" At last, we approached the wreath of whirling 
spray, and heard the hollow roar of the Voring 
Foss. The great chasm yawned before us ; an- 
other step, and we stood on the brink. I seized 
the branch of a tough pine sapling as a support 
and leaned over. My head did not swim ; the 
height was too great for that, the impression too 
grand and wonderful ! The shelf of rock on which 
I stood projected far oAit over a gulf one thousand 
two hundred feet deep, whose opposite side rose 
in one great escarpment from the bottom to a 



AD VER TI SEME NT. I j 

height of eight hundred feet above my head. On 
the black wall, wet with eternal spray, was painted 
a splendid rainbow, forming two-thirds of a circle 
before it melted into the gloom below." 

To those who have visited the waterfall I would 
say — if I have heaped up mountains in the wrong 
place or have taken any other poetical liberty with 
the surroundings — that Poesy is a sorceress, and 
deals with realities as if they were, indeed, " such 
stuff as dreams are made of;" and, besides, I have 
seen the Voring Foss only in imagination. 

In regard to the supernaturalism of the follow- 
ing poem it is scarcely necessary to speak, not- 
withstanding some critics have held that fairy-tales 
and the like, of whatever kind, are below the 
dignity of poetry — suitable only to very young 
children and very credulous old women. This, I 
think, is unworthy of serious refutation. Is Bi^ir- 
ger's Der Wilde Jager less striking because we 
have never heard the Wild Huntsman wind his 
horn and dash away in the demoniac chase ? is 
Homer less sublime and Homeric because we 



1 2 AD VER TI SEME NT. 

know his gods and goddesses, with their plots 
and councils, are nothing but mere creations of 
the brain ? is A Midsummer-Night's Dream less 
beautiful, as a work of art, because we common- 
place mortals are debarred from seeing Puck 
apply love-charms to the eyes of sleeping lovers, 
and because we never meet with his fairy-peers 
darting, like electric sparks, 

" Ovei- hill, over dale, 

Thorough bush, thorough brier, 
Over park, over pale, 

Thorough flood, thorough fire" ? 



THE VIKING. 



PROLOGUE. 



O YE ! who dealt unto a darkling world 

The dire reward of superstitious sloth, 
Whose sinewy arm and fearless spirit hurl'd 

Vile impotence to naught, and sear'd the growth 
Of rottenness that canker'd many a land 

(When man had fallen so low that serfs were loth 
To leave their serfdom), — Norsemen ! still your 
hand 

Hath left its mark on nations ! Still the earth 
Retains your footprints in its shifting sand ; 

And still your blood imbues — nor is there dearth 
Of your deep-burning ardor to be free — 

A holier fire, a higher moral worth 
In races that are noblest. On the sea. 

Where Nature speaks of Freedom, was your 
home ! 

2* 13 



J. THE VIKING. 

The storm, that rolls the waves with madding glee, 

The breaker-bar, where heaves the boiling toam, 
The blue expanse of Ocean, boundless round, 

Leaving you free at will to rest or roam, — 
These are poetic Freedom, and they found 

Embodiment in what ye did, and bore 
Upon our destiny. — Ye first descried 

This wrong-named world — our own hesperian 
shore ! 
Say ! was it not your valor, often tried 

In mortal combat in the days of yore, 
That tingled in our veins, and did provide 

A Henry's eloquence, scarce known before, — 
A Franklin, sage the reins of state to guide, — 

A Jones to scourge the sea with sword and 
brand, — 

A Washington to found a glorious land ? 



It hath been many eventful years 
Since, in the Scandinavian clime, 



THE VIKING. 

Brave Ulclrick and his hardy peers 

Would hst the scald's inspiring rhyme, 
And quaff their copious horns of mead, 
And boast of scar and warlike deed, 
And tell of Odin's blissful shore, 
Where they should fight 
From morn till night, 
And wounds should heal and ne'er be sore ! 
13ut, though their lusty laugh is still 

And moons have waned and ages fled 
And drinking-horns no more they fill, 

Their memory is not wholly dead ; 
For scalds have oft the story told — 

To chieftains full as brave as he — 
Of Uldrick, once a Viking bold. 

When Norsemen sail'd the sea. 

II. 

Lithe as the reindeer, brawny, tall, 
Was Uldrick with the yellow hair; 

In mien and step and voice withal 
He bore the chief's commanding air; 



1 5 THE VIKING. 

For well he knew his fathers long 

Had been renown'd in many* a war, 
And that, in tale and victor-song, 
'Twas sung their noble veins along 

Had pulsed the blood of mighty Thor. 
His sword hung down, a ponderous weight. 

Dangling from his golden belt; — 
Ah me ! theirs was an adverse fate 

Who e'er its keen destruction felt. 
Within his deep-blue eye there burn'd 

A fire that proved him not of those 
Who, from emprise, can e'er be turn'd 

By hardships or the fear of foes ; 
For, once begun. 
He scorn'd to shun 
A danger — so the end be won. 
For this his comrades loved him well 

And follow'd where he bravely led ; 
Full well they knew, whate'er befell, 

They had a Chieftain at their head. 



THE VIKING. 



III. 



17 



Within a sombre, wild fiord 

The Viking built a dragon fleet 
And mann'd it with his pirate horde, 

And all, at length, was made complete. 
At sunset, 'mid a deafening eheer. 
Through mountains echoing far and near. 
He wound his magic ivory horn, 

And gave the long-desired command 
That they should sail at early morn 

Toward the merry southern land, 
Where maidens fair 
With hazel hair. 
And gold, and wine, should be their share,- 
And where the sun shines warm and bright 
As in Valhalla's vale of light. 



IV. 



But Uldrick, stretch'd upon his bed 
— His muscular arm beneath his head- 



J 3 THE VIKING. 

A heavenly vision saw in sleep, 

When silence reign'd at midnight deep : 

A Lady, radiant as the sun, 

Embraced and kiss'd him where he lay, 
And with her witching beauty won 

The heart no queen could steal away ! 
She then besought him not to sail. 

And bade, instead, that he should cross 
O'er mountain wall and mountain dale 

Till he should come to Voring'Foss, 
And, when the moonlight silver'd all, 
To view th' enchanted waterfall. 
And when, alas ! she did depart 
She bore away his valiant heart. 



V. 

Said Rolf the Seer, — 
'' Why stand'st thou here ? 
Hast thou not cruised full many a sea 
To flowery lands where grows the vine ? 



THE VIKING. IQ 

Where women are fair as fair can be ? 
Where golden spoils await for thee, 

And brimming casks of Gaulish wine? 
What is there in an empty dream 

Though thou shouldst dream it o'er and o'er ? 
A meteor with a faithless beam, 

A vacant mind, and nothing more. 
Thy goodly crafts lie in the bay 

And idly rock in every breeze, 
While thou dost speak of vain delay, 

Nor sail'st across the deep-blue seas. 
Thou erst didst love the stern-cut shore 

Where rocks uplift their heads on high, — 
The giants dire that lived of yore. 

That, turn'd to stone, through murky sky 
Scowl downward with the look they wore. — 

Thou erst didst love the maelstrom-whirl 
And surf-capp'd breakers' deepening roar 

And white sea-foam's fantastic curl ; — 
Such were thy joys in years before ! 
O ! why thus idly dost thou stand 

And speak of mountains bare and bleak ? 



20 THE VIKING. 

The sea is blue ! the air is bland ! 

And Fortune's smile to seek !" 

VI. 

A week had pass'd, and yet the fleet 

Still rock'd along the shelving sand 
Within the harbor's safe retreat, 

That, girdled round on either hand 
By lofty mountains, crown'd with snow, 
Lay darken'd by their shade below. 
And scarce a single sound was heard 

Upon the beach, so lately rife 
With jocund shouts and idle word 

And all the din of busy life. 
For, save the guards — a trusty few 
Still left behind, — the stalwart crew 
Had gone with Uldrick far away. 

Although with ill-dissembled grief; 
But not a man could disobey 

The mandate of so loved a Chief 
The mountain-towers that loom'd o'erhead 
Hung poised more awful, huge, and dread; 



THE VIKING. 21 

The craggy cliff, the dark ravine, 

The far-off wold of blasted pine, 
The ghost-like mists which rose between 

The towering peaks from off the brine. 
The deep, deep silence — how sublime ! — 

Disturb'd but by the sounding wave, 
Telling of endless, endless time — 

Not life's short hour before the grave, — 
Were more majestic, wild, austere. 
Since on the shore 
Were heard no more 
The laugh and song rise loud and clear. 
And over all there seem'd a gloom 
Prophetic of disastrous doom. 

VII. 

Brave Uldrick stands at Voring Foss 
Where sprayey drops, like crystal tears, 

Hang shimmering on the shaggy moss 

Which clothed the rocks a thousand years. 

The fuU-orb'd moon is beaming down 
Upon the wild, the glorious scene, — 
3 



22 THE VIKING. 

O'er mountain, rock, and deep ravine, 
And o'er the torrent weaves a crown 

Of iris tints and mingling sheen 
In clouds of spray, that, floating, wreathe 
The rocks where thundering waters seethe. 
The Sea-king, lost in thought profound, 

Stands off a distance from his men. 
The deafening, beating, awful sound 

Reechoes back from mount and glen. 
And o'er the Chieftain falls a spell, 

A strange delight, a nameless power. 
That makes him feel that he could dwell 

(Nor ever ask a nobler dower) 
With Nature, in such grandeur drcss'd. 
Forgetful — dreaming — bless'd. 



VIII. 

The wreaths of mist, like sprites, arise 
Oft half invisible to the sight, 

And, drifting, change their moon-lit dyes- 
Now yellowish dun, now silvery bright 



THE VIKING. 23 

And with how many a shape and size 

They float through floods of lambent light, 
Or, in some shadow hanging dim. 
Are changed to Jotuns huge and grim ! 
And as they sink or upward go. 

While breezes wafl: them here and there, 
Some catch a tremulous Tyrian glow 

Like fairy gossamer on the air ; 
But grander far the lace-like sheets 

Of quivering spray, — the torrent's hiss, 
And roar, as down it pours, and beats, 

And whirls — into the dread abyss ! 
Enrobed in terror, gloom, and night, 

Hemm'd in by rocks that touch the sky. 
Wild hell of beauty! fell delight! 

Whose sullen thunders never die ! — 

IX. 

Says Rolf the Seer, whose hoary hair 
Disheveird streams upon the gale, — 

" No sight so grandly, wildly fair 
Was pictured e'er in song or tale ! 



24 THE VIKING. 

'Tis said that on the mist and spray 

The Water-Spirits ride along ; 
While with fantastic romp and play 

Queer elfin hordes, a wanton throng, 
Swarm shouting after 
With silent laughter, 
And blow the clouds like thistle-seeds, 

And catch their comrades as they fly 
Dragging them frqm their airy steeds, 

Though all unseen by human eye ! 
But many a scald has whilom told 

How mountain shepherds oft have seen 
The Water-Sprites their revels hold 

To crown with mist their lovely Queen, 
Who was more fair, in regal state. 

Than are the nymphs with heavenly graces 
That, smiling from Valhalla's gate, 

Await their lusty lords' embraces." 



O list, that wild, unearthly strain 
Now indistinct, now soft and clear ! 



THE VIKING. 25 



O list, it comes again, again, 
Falling how sweetly on the ear ! 

'Tis touch'd with sadness — 

The soul of joy ! 
'Tis heavenly gladness 
Without alloy ! 
Ha ! now the torrent's voice is still — 

The mountain-walls alone repeat 
From grot and glen and darksome hill 
The roar that died beneath their feet. 
The echoing thunders die away; — 
The crags have caught the elfin lay ! 
To many a mountain's clifted side 
The music trembles far and wide ; 
'Tis on the air, — 
'Tis everywhere ! — 
The stars look down with pleased affright ; 
The night is redolent of delight; 
Enchantment waves her mystic hand — 
Changing the scene to fairyland ! 
3* 



26 THE VIKING. 



XI. 



Says Rolf the Seer, — ** On you we call, 
Ye sisters weird, O guard us now! 

Ye Powers of Light in Odin's hall, 
O shield — we bow ! we bow !" 



XII. 

Lo, spray and foam, a pearly shower, 
Are made a throne by magic power, 
Upon whose curious-sculptured sides 
How many a dewdrop glancing glides ! 
The diamond sparks, with ceaseless motion. 

How quick they fade — to being start, 
As oft, at night, o'er summer's ocean 

Bright phosphorescent wavelets dart. 
The canopy, how rich and gleaming, 

Festoon'd above without support ! 
No Indian sultan, lazily dreaming. 

On such a throne e'er held his court. 
Ha ! on the air strange spirits stand 
Holding the throne with many a hand : — 



THE VIKING. 

Such jocund pigmies — 

Such queer enigmas; 
Some with bright tresses, some without ; 
Some, romping, wing them round about ; 

Some, flame-Hke, shimmer 

And, fading, glimmer, — 
Wild meteors flitting in and out ! 



XIII. 

The pa:;an-strains how startling sweet 
From many a fairy's scallop-shell ! 
With what voluptuous power replete 
Is every tremulous sink and swell ! 
Now falling sadly ; 
Now rising madly ; 
Now ringing gladly ; 
Now sinking low, low, low, serene — 
O list, a silvery voice is singing, 
A deep enchantment wildly flinging 
Over the scene ! 



27 



28 THE VIKING. 

I 

XIV. 

SONG OF THE FIRST SPIRIT. 

Sprites ! arise from 'neath the wave 
Where the sun ne'er sheds his beams, 

Where the pearl and beryl pave 

Blossomy leas with mellow gleams, 

And the star-like diamonds clear 

Flash their radiance — Hear, O hear ! 



SONG OF THE SECOND SPIRIT. 

Sprites, arise ! the Queen commands ; 

Ouphes and elves, prepare the way ; 
Bind your locks with misty bands, 

Don your gossamer rich array. 
Through the blissful power of love 
Comes the Queen to earth above. 



THE VIKING. 



29 



SONG OF THE THIRD SPIRIT. 

Fair Gunylda, mightiest Queen ! 

Leave thy gleaming, crystal halls, 
Where the velvet mosses green 

Overdrape the dewy walls ; 
Come, O come ! we wait for thee 
Bowing low on bended knee. 



SONG OF THE FOURTH SPIRIT. « 

Rise to earth, O Lady fair! 

Come, eclipse the moon's bright day ; 
Leave that land whose nectarous air 

Is like spice of Araby, — 
Where the waters' lullaby 
Murmuring on shall never die. 



30 



THE VIKING, 

SONG OF CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

Hail, Gunylda! Queen of Beauty! 

Who is half so fair as thou ? 
Lo, thou com'st — here we in duty 

Lowly, lowly, lowly bow. 
Hail, O Queen ! how bless'd is he 
Whom thou tak'st thy love to be ! 

XV. 

Says Rolf the Seer (a space apart 
Is Uldrick from his awe-struck men, 

Who turn, bewilder'd, with a start 
To hear a Imuiaii voice again), — 

** If e'er ye practice Runic spell, 

Now is the time for shielding power ; 

For ye, who practice Runes, 'tis well — 
This is a dreadful hour. 

Beware ! beware ! the Sprites impel 
Beholders o'er with vile deceit 
To leap the falls — a thousand feet, — 
Oh, 'tis a direful hour!" 



THE VIKING. 31 



XVI. 



Behold, she mounts her gorgeous throne, 
Calm, peerless, beauteous, grand, alone ! 

How queenly doth she wear her crown 
Blazing with many a radiant gem ! 

The mist-like drapery streaming down 
Half hides her moon-lit diadem. 
Her eyes — no gem was e'er so bright — 

As blue as heaven — bewildering eyes ! 
More soft than moonbeams' quivering light 

O'er lakes that mirror back the skies. 
Jewel'd with brightness 
Her robe of whiteness, 
From graceful neck and breast of snow, 

How stately falls in many a fold 
O'er limbs just outlined faint below, 

And form of round, voluptuous mould ! 
What alabaster could compare 
With brow so pure, so pearly fair, 
Sunny with wavy golden hair ? 



32 



THE VIKING. 



XVII. 



Brave Uldrick stands and gazes o'er 

The awful brink beneath his feet, 

Down, down, where dashing torrents beat 
In but the passing hour before. 

The dizzy depth is heeded not ; 

The peril dire he' hath forgot ; 
One minute, yea, an instant more 
That foot-press'd rock may downward slide — 
Ye Powers ! the tottering rocks divide, — 

Ah — now they, turning, catch again. 

There's naught his mazy senses ken 
Of all the danger ; naught beside 

Those smiling eyes upturn'd to him, 

Whose love-light makes the moonbeams dim. 
He speaks in musing undertone: 
" The lovely face, the lips of red, 

How oft I kiss'd them in my dreams — 
And waked to find the vision fled ! 

The shower of hair with sunny gleams, 



THE VIKING. ^^ 

The slender waist with gem my zone, 
The blue, blue eyes I saw in sleep, 
That seem'd not eyes they were so dec/^, — 

Now, now, they shall be all my own !" 



xviir. 

O list ! she speaks, — a language sweeter 
Than is the Norseman's harsher tongue; 
'Tis smoother than the scalds have sung 

Their ballads in mellifluous metre. 

Now meet reply does Uldrick make 
(His voice replete with passion's fire 
Thrills like a heavenly-finger'd lyre,) 

In language like to that she spake. 
Ah, Uldrick, who has taught to thee 

So soft a tongue? ah, w^hy forsake 
The Norse, the fittest for the sea ? 

He turns with hands upheld in air, 
And lifts him to his fullest height, — 
A towering form against the night; 

4 



34 THE VIKING. 



Over his forehead, broad and bare, 
The night-wind toys his dampen'd hair, 

He seems in act to draw and fight; 
He leaps ! — The foot-press'd rocky ledge 
Has fallen prone o'er the yawning edge — 

Down! down! he's lost, he's lost to sight- 

XIX. 

Says Rolf the Seer, — " My heart hath beat 
A thousand times since Uldrick fell ! 
When will the falling fragments tell. 
With awful crash, the fate they meet ? 
Hark, now the trembling rocks repeat 

The sullen sound they back repel ! 
They, thundering, quake beneath my feet. 
A knell — a knell — a doleful knell ; 
Oh ! let it swell." 

XX. 

The moon is hid behind a cloud ; 

A sudden mist has gloom'd the gale; 



THE VIKING. 

The rocks appear amidst the shroud 

Like monsters indistinct and pale. 

The waters, hissing, whirling, roaring, 
Raise up their deepening voice aloud — 

Into the deep black caldron pouring. 
Unseen they sweep along, and sink 

Plunging through shades of nether night, 
Save, just along the darkling brink, 

Glimmers a foamy line of light. 
The fairy shells have ceased to ring ; 

The vision fled, — so passing strange; 
The voices hush'd — no longer sing : 

Ah, joy and beauty ever change. 
Still, elfin-like, a witching strain 

Is lingering on the night-wind sighing; 
The sweeter sighs alone remain — 

Now e'en the wind itself is dying. 
Now, far and near, the torrent's sound 

Among the rocks and caves rejoices. 
Echoing wildly round and round — 

A choir of muffled ghostly voices. 



35 



36 



THE VIKING. 



XXI. 



The cloud is passing — passing — gone, 

The moonb'ght floods the wonted scene. 
The spray and foam whirl on, and on. 

With all their former varied sheen. 
And turn and roll in shapeless form, 

As, oft, at summer eve, are seen 
The thunder-clouds amidst the storm, 

When genii vile bestride the blast 

Heaving them onward dark and fast. 
The beauty, glory, grandeur, fear, 

That fill the scene, crowd on the heart, 
Leaving a seal, which many a year 

Shall last, — yea, haply ne'er depart. 



XXII. 

Says Rolf the Seer, — *' Oh welaway ! 

What woe is ours, my gallant men, — 
We all may live our earthly day 

Nor have so great a Chief again ! 



THE VIKING. 

The bravest king that sail'd the sea, 
With heart like Ocean's, throbbing free. 
Woe, woe is ours, my vaHant men, 
We'll ne'er have such a Chief again !" 

XXIII. 

Says Rolf the Seer,—" Let Uldrick rest. 
The rocks the pillows 'neath his head. 

The dashing spray will o'er his breast, — 
What recks he, cold and dead ? 

Through all the long, long winter drear 
An icy shroud shall fold him round, 
Nor could so grand a place be found 

In which to lay our Chieftain dear. 

His corse shall hear the pattering sound 

Upon his tomb of crystal clear. 

When drive the snow, and hail, and sleet, 
The drapery o'er his winding-sheet. 

And when the winter, cold, severe. 
Dissolves his stolid icy chains 
And genial summer smiling reigns, 
4^ 



37 



38 



THE VIKING. 

He, resting on, shall ever hear 

The faUing waters' awful roar ; 
'Twould fill some hearts with dread and fear, 

But Uldrick loved the grand of yore : 
To him, 'twill be the best of cheer ; — 

A foamy pall shall fold him o'er ; — 
Each drop of spray shall be a tear. 
Yon chasm shall be the proudest grave 
Where slumber th' ashes of the brave !" 

XXIV. 

A space, the men all gaze below 

Each with a sad and downcast face, 
And turn them slowly round to go, 

To hie them from the fatal place, 
Ruing the day 
They left the bay. 
Thus, leave they there their Chief for aye. 

And cross the mountains, crag and moss; 
And slow the roaring dies away 

Of wild, majestic Vori ng Foss. 



THE VIKING. 



XXV. 



39 



We know not what we seem to know, 

Our vision scarce exceeds a span ; 
We see not what the years shall show ; 

We winnow — but retain the bran. 
How wondrous is the web of life ! 

Delight full often ends in sadness ; 
Events with keenest sorrow rife 

As often herald joy and gladness. 

'Tis said by those who oft have seen 
That, when the moon is full and bright 
And Voring Foss is robed in light, 

Upon a throne of gorgeous sheen 
Brave Uldrick reigns a king beside 

The Water-Spirits' beauteous Queen — 
His loved, his fair, his elfin bride. 

If this be true, it is not strange 

That — as they tell — he ne'er hath sigh'd 

In all these centuries, fraught with change, 
To in Valhalla's bliss abide. 



^Q THE VIKING. 



They say he reigns th' immortal king 

Of fair Gunylda's murmuring land, 
Where all the year is blooming spring 

With odorous zephyrs breathing bland, 
And unseen harps forever ring. 

And princedoms wait at his command ; 
Where falling founts, with lulling sound, 

Through many an agate palace run ; 
Where diamond-lamps shed glory round 

Like southern California's sun ; 
Where shimmering dewdrops ever flow 
O'er flowers that never cease to blow. 
Said Rolf the Seer, 
With many a tear, — 
" O ! may our mighty Chieftain rest !" — 

He knew not that, when Uldrick sprung, 
'Twas but to reach the haven-breast 

Round which his arms have ever clung, 
Loving, beloved, and bless'd. 



GUY. 



Heu, quoties fidem 
Mutatosque Deos flebit, et aspeia 
Nigris ajquora ventis 
Emira])itur insolens ! 

HoR., Lib. I. Od. V. 



41 



GUY. 



PART THE FIRST. 

There are whose lives, from birth oft unto death, 
Are shadow'd by misfortune, and, without 
Sufficient cause on their own parts, are cursed 
With woes and peace-destroying ills beyond 
Those who have more deserved them. Such be- 
come, 
Through lengthen'd suffering, skeptical at heart — 
Losing their faith in virtue and in Heaven. 
And, though for them, at last, the clouds should 

break. 
There ever must remain in such sad souls 
A part of their accustom'd gloom; which, nor 
The natural goodness of a gifted mind. 
Nor all the untold beauty of this world, 
Can e'er dispel. — Now be it mine to trace 
A portion of th' events of such a life ; — 

43 



44 



GUY. 



Of one endovv'd above vulgarity, 

Who, if his birth had been beneath a star 

Not unauspicious, had been, haply, great; 

But, ruin'd and unhappy as he was. 

Is worthy still remembrance — and a tear. 

There is a land that breathes of mystery — 
A vast extent — the home of solitude 
Primeval. There the long-maned buffalo 
Feeds o'er the great savannas, herds of deer 
Snuff the free air of taintless purity, 
Roaming at will ; and, midst the forests dim 
And mountain fastnesses, the grizzly bear 
And panther have their lair. It is a region 
Whose huge cloud-piercing mountains wind away 
In chains of many a hundred miles in length, — 
Whose awful torrents and calm-flowing streams 
Make Europe's rivers seem as rivulets, — 
Whose plains are boundless like the sea. — A land 
Of forests, lonely lakes, and deserts drear. 
And dread canyons in whose all-voiceless depths 
The mighty rivers seem, unto the eye 



GC/K 45 

Dizzy and awe-struck, like diminutive ribbons 
Of silvery light; — a land whose myriad spots 
Of beauty, quietude, fertility, 
Do seem as they were made to be true 
Terrestrial paradise. O what a realm 
Is this great West ! What will it be when time 
Shall have subdued its vastness by the might 
Of cultivation ! Will it not become 
The world's rich harvest-field? will not its crops 
Feed those that hunger in far-distant climes? — 
Yes, if our Country's Liberty survive. 
It shall be fair Progression's chosen home. 
But if our Freedom perish — O may he 
(If one e'er plot to mar — destroy our State) 
Be damn'd to live a lingering life, and feel 
The conscious baseness, vileness of himself 
His upas curse, till withering self-contempt 
Consume him ! — Ay, if Liberty survive. 
It shall become the store-house of the world : 
But now it is untenanted, save where 
The march of civilization has begemm'd 
Its marge with cities populous ; and save 

5 



46 



GC'V. 



The few remaining Indian hordes that rove 

Its woods and prairies. All this Western World 

Is yet in infancy. Its history seems 

A day, when thinking of the distant reign 

Of Cheops or the city of old Ninus. 

What was it in the cycles of the past ? 

Who were its people ere the Argive bands 

Beleaguer'd Ilium ? 'Tis a continent 

Whose story is conjecture ; and the West. 

So broad, and lone, and beautiful, and wild. 

Is redolent of deeper mystery. 

'Twas near the confines of this wilderness, 

Upon a morning in the month of May, 

When scarce the young leaves trembled 'neath 

the flood 
Of golden sunlight, in the gentle breeze 
That stole from banks of flowers with scarce a 

whisper, 
A Youth, a pilgrim from the busy world, 
Stood all alone within a forest dell. 
He felt the west-wind ripple through his hair 



G[/V. 



47 



As warm and balmy as the breath of Venus; 
He drank the still enchantment of the scene, 
And felt the power of beauty crowd upon 
Him and intoxicate with strange delight; 
And, feeling e'en as one return'd at length 
From foreign lands to home and those he loves 
(O blissful moment!), cried — " Here will I dwell. 
And ne'er again turn to the haunts of Man — 
More lonely than the wilderness! Ah, yes, 
If there is aught of peace, for mc, on earth, 
'Tis here with Nature, whom I take to be 
The ever-charming mistress of my heart." 

His years were few, and yet his life had grown 
Almost a burden ; for the magic light, 
Which once had fondly seem'd to fill the world. 
Had vanish'd year by year until to him 
Remain'd but barrenness ; and with the change 
Himself had changed, till e'en the thrill of joy 
Was full of sadness. Thus, he oft had been 
Most sick at heart amid the jarring throb 
And noise and bustle of the world, where men 



48 



GUY. 



Grow cold and selfish, and had stood alone 
Within the crowded mart on gala-days 
And at the banquet, rout, and giddy ball, 
Longing for something better than to live. 
Oft in such moments, making them more sad 
(Like half-remember'd dreams of happiness), 
A spell fell o'er him ; and he heard the low 
Soft whispers of the forest and the lull 
Of dimpling waters and the song of birds. 
And saw the far blue sky, lone hill and dell — 
Fair Nature's varied face with all its smiles 
And nameless beauties, — and he caught the breath 
Of violets and wild-roses and sweet thyme 
By limpid brooklets where the humble-bees 
Are ever busy ; — and he deem'd 'twas well 
That he should leave the throng and wander far. 
As others thought, in solitude, but where 
For him there was society, and dwell 
Alone with Nature and his sadden'd heart. 

For he remember'd how in earlier youth 
He oft had walk'd with Nature. Even then 



GC/v. 49 

The spirits of the universe had stoop'd 

To be his high companions, and the winds 

Were his wild playmates, and e'en trifles were 

To him as friends, and charmed beauty grew 

A wondrous mirror that did half reveal 

The mysteries of eternity and truth. 

Nor was it thus alone in time of flowers, 

And birds, and sunshine. When the southing 

sun, 
At Capricorn, turn'd toward the gusty North, 
The snow, that fell so spotless o'er the fields 
And lonely wood and hamlet, — clouds, which 

lower'd 
In gloomy grandeur, — yea, the howl and dash 
And tumult of the tempest, that recall'd 
With sadden'd pleasure summer's stilly days. 
When night had fallen and all without was dark 
And drear and dreadful ! — and the deep, deep 

blue 
Of heaven, when winds were still and midnight 

clouds 
Were scatter'd, seemly groundwork for the stars 



so 



GUY. 



(The hieroglyphics of that grandest vault), — 
And moon, that smiled enchantment o'er the 

earth ; — 
These were most eloquent, and waked in him 
The deep unspoken poesy of the heart, 
E'en as the wanton winds, in sunny June, 
Dancing on tip-toe o'er the nodding fields 
Of sweet red clover. 

In those happy days, 
He loved the mountains, climbing at his will 
Their steep and shaggy sides e'en to the clouds 
That mantled o'er their summits. By the sea. 
The ever-rolling melancholy sea, 
He loiter'd oft to watch the dark wild waves 
And list the music of their dissonance, — 
The mightiest minstrels of the earth. And thou, 
Sublime Niagara ! how swell'd his heart 
When first he saw thee through thy misty veil, 
Crown'd with thy rainbow-diadem ! He watch'd, 
Rapt with the grandeur of the scene, for hours. 
Thy beauteous deep-green waters rush amain, 
Dappled with patches of fantastic frotli, 



GUV. 51 

On to the awful gulf — and, thundering, die, 

Stunn'd at the bottom in wild-curdled foam ! 

And, musing on thy driving spray, he saw 

How mutable, how short is life, beside 

Th' eternity of Nature ; and he felt 

The impulse of idolatry, — he scarce 

Refrain'd to leap into thy turmoil — lose 

Himself in tJice, O Irresistible ! 

Lodging within some cottage near thy brink, 

Full oft he thought, half-dreaming, through the 

night, 
He heard the hoarse tornado, then awoke 
And listen'd to thy jarring sullen roar, 
Rising and falling with the midnight gale. 
Sounding forever. — 

Oft, when others stood 
Aghast, he was most happy. 'Midst the storm 
He seem'd the Genius of the elements. 
The boding breathless hush, — the darkling clouds, 
Heaving against the sky, o'ercapp'd with light 
Like Ocean's wrecking waves, — the sudden stir 
Of trembling leaves upturn'd, — the playful leap 



52 



GUY. 



Of blinding lightning, — the bough-rending storm, 
And deepening roll of thunders, making earth 
And air to palpitate, — the tear- like drops, 
Large and pellucid, pattering here and there, 
Prelusive to the pouring of the rain, — 
Then the dim wall of drops innumerable, . 
Continual falling, shutting from the eye 
The humid landscape; — such were his delights. 

In field and wold, fann'd by the cool free air, 
There was for him a never-ceasing pleasure. 
The willow, drooping pensively as fill'd 
With his enduring sadness — stately oak, 
Patrician of the forest — sighing pine 
With scented shade and soft wild melody — 
And linden, with its air of cheerfulness, 
Waving its blossoms to the breath of June, 
Are all endow'd with an intelligence 
That waked an echo-sympathy in his heart. 
Thus, through the many animate forms of life ; 
He held them all as kindred. Savage beasts 
He saw, in fierceness, are not unlike men. 



GUY. 53 

Loving to trace through all those lower lives 

The glimmering light of reason, he had mark'd 

The war-horse, prancing, snuff the air whene'er 

Sounded the rolling drum and bugle-blast, — 

The faithful dog go many a weary mile 

Home to his master, poor howe'er he be. 

And there with eloquent gestures of delight 

Express his joy and undissembling love. 

These taught him how presumptuous are the minds 

Tumid with what they deem profoundest lore, 

That fancy all the mighty universe 

Was made for them, for their poor sovereignty, — 

Self-constituted puppets of low pride — 

Earth's demigods of rapine and conceit ! 

Such he would leave and feel himself to hold 

A nobler station in the scale of things, 

That he, in humbleness, could hail all life. 

All Nature as his kindred and his friends. 

And thus it was that he became, as 'twere, 

Companion of the universe, and made 

High friendship with the soul of solitude, 

Speaking a language that is not of speech. 



54 ouv. 

And, studying that most aged, truthful page 
Outspread before him, pondering deep and long, 
He learn'd what all the schools could teach him 
not. 

But he did turn from Nature to abide 

With Man, though in his heart there were most sad 

Misgivings — though he sigh'd to be again 

Wafted along the deep-blue lake and free 

Among the mountains. He did turn away 

From that which was his joy unto his woe. 

Bright dreams, the ignes-fatui of the brain, 

Oft haunted him and pictured to his mind 

Most sweet and heavenly things, — that he might be 

A benefactor, blessing to mankind ; 

For he was fiU'd with love for all the world 

And noble aspirations to do good. 

Thus, with a heart susceptible of deep 

Delight and love, despair and misery. 

He turn'd to tasks by him not understood, 

And, ah ! how ill-requited. What a change 

The earth would show, if each but knew himself — 



GUY. 55 

For what he is most suited ! Still, methinks, 
There would be many a hapless son of earth 
So born beneath the shadow of mischance, 
And nurtured up, without his fault, to be 
A child of sorrow, that, e'en then, this life 
Would oft be dark, unhappy. Thus, with him, 
Whate'er he nobly did for others' weal 
Reverted on himself in bitterness. 

He had full many friends whom he did trust. 

Deeming them truthful as himself: and one, 

Who shared his joys and griefs, his highest hopes 

And dearest aspirations, whom he loved 

E'en as a brother. But, alas ! how few, 

That cloak them under friendship's holy name, 

Have other love than their own selfishness — 

Are else than parasites of prosperity, 

Envying most the one they call their friend ! 

Those who profess'd to him the greatest zeal, 

Ever in honey'd phrase, did secretly 

Revile him ; and the one, whom he loved best, 

Treated him most ungratefully when fortune 



56 



GUY. 



Ceased smiling for a moment. Pitying them, 
He cast them off in sore disgust at man's 
So abject perfidy. Henceforth he came 
To doubt mankind ; and even in himself 
He lost his wonted confidence. He trusted 
None, ever after, that did call \\\\x\ friend. 

There was a maiden younger than himself, 

Whom, e'en in schooldays, he was wont to view 

With boyish admiration ; in whose face 

He scarcely dared to look for bashfulness — 

Yet, whose bright smile he fancied was as sweet 

As his own mother's. Her he help'd to cross 

The icy places on the way to school. 

On winter mornings, carrying oft her books 

Right gallantly ; then, haply, all the day 

Felt happy, though he knew not why, and conn'd 

His irksome tasks with something of delight. 

But this was all the joy he had at school, — 

He was a strange, wild being, loving most 

To wander through the fields and ancient woods, 



GUY. 



57 



And study what he pleased by fits and starts, 
Hating the dull routine day after day. 

Then there were years in which he saw not oft 

This maiden ; but, whene'er they met, there seem'd 

Some new-born beauty, charm in her fair face, — 

Some added grace of person ; and her voice 

Grew softer still and sweeter. Even then 

He look'd into her eyes with strange pleased awe 

Because of their shy loveliness ; and all 

Her girlish ways, ridiculous in themselves, 

Commanded, for her sake, his due respect. — 

Yea, tHat which had been silly in another. 

In her, became a beauty to his eye. 

Yes, he had loved her, though he knew it not, 

E'en in the blush of girlhood ; and his heart. 

When she had grown to womanhood, adored 

With all the passionate ardor of his youth. 

His mind, which, in itself, had long become 
A golden treasury of most lovely truths 
And images of beauty, gave to her 
6 



58 



GUY. 



The halo of its lustre with each thought, 

As brooklets seem to tinge with their own hue 

The pebbles white seen through them. Dreaming 

dreams, 
Sweet in their unreality, he made 
Her empress of a bright ideal world, 
Created all for her. He fill'd her being 
With spiritous love and loveliness beyond, 
Yet, meet to one so fair and fairy-like, 
And braided for her brow a wreath of all 
Or bright or beautiful, until he came 
To love an earthless soul divine, that dwelt 
Only within his dreams — the heavenly birth 
Of his own fancy, — that in all the world 
Had not existence. — But he knew it not, 
Nor dream'd that she was less than he had dream'd. 
And, gazing in her soft and luminous eyes. 
That ne'er reproved, he drank the wine of love. 
Deep draughts of blinding love, until, for him. 
There was nor joy nor bliss — save in her smile. 
He would have given his dearest hope in life, 
Drunk with the 'wildering ecstasy of love. 



GUY 



59 



To fold his arms, beneath her streaming hair, 
About her waist — kissing her loving Hps ! — 

Meekly coquettish, she would smile, half frown, 
And smile, — and lead him on with those coy arts 
That seem so artless ; acts, which, of themselves, 
Are nothing, but to him who madly loved 
Were priceless, — El Dorados of the heart. 
But they were all deceits to hold the sway 
The longer o'er her vassal (to enthrall 
With the dull torture of uncertainty). 
Evading ever; for with secret pride 
She knew he loved her, and she felt too well 
It was an honor to have gain'd his love. 
Yes, she was but a woman ; and her heart — 
Like others of her sex — could learn to love 
The tinsel glitter of some puny Croesus, 
Won by his servile haughtiness, yet turn 
From him, who, as a plain and honest man, 
Dares whisper the devotion of deep love. 

Alas ! alas ! there is no sadder sight 
In this wide world, that is too often sad. 



6o GUY. 

Than, having built an idol to adore, 
To see it fall from its exalted niche 
E'en while we do it homage, and to know 
'Tis earthy as the dust wherein it lies. 

When he perceived the baseness of the mind 
Which he had thought to have been ever fill'd 
With lo\^ and beauty, stunn'd, he fled away, 
Dizzy with vague bewildering woe, which changed 
Gradually to th' acute despair of his 
Wild nature. Often he essay'd to laugh 
Fiercely and like a madman at his pain ; 
But, while a ghastly smile o'erblanch'd his cheek, 
His heart was wrung with deeper agony. 
He did upbraid her not, nor saw her more : 
But the last look of disappointed love, 
The silent eloquence of his sad dark eye, 
Did leave a withering poison in her soul ; 
Which, suddenly, when she else had been most 

happy. 
Stifled the thrill of joy, and made her feel 
The damning pang of lingering self-contempt. 



GUY. 5l 

He did upbraid her not, nor saw her more; 

And, fleeing like sonic criminal, hunted down 

With echoing hue-and-cry, he fled the scenes 

Of home and youth, most dear, and cursed himself 

That he could love one so unworthy love. 

But he, methinks, could not but still adore 

That Beauteous One who dwelt within his dreams, 

Round whom he had entwined so many thoughts 

Of beauty and sweet purity divine 

And heavenly high affection, though he knew 

'Twas but a radiant phantasm of his own 

Creation — an ideal of a soul, 

Without an earthly likeness. 

O how hard 
He strove to tear that sorrow from his heart — 
That morbid woe that crush'd him with its weight ! 
As, in the desert of the far Southwest, 
The stunted tree, beside the dried-up fount, 
Droops through the rainless season of the year, 
'Neath the fierce fiery sun, until the leaves 
Are parch 'd and crisped ; even so, he felt 
His heart consume its own vitality — 
6* 



62 GUY. 

Withering in utter loneliness. The few 

That would have loved him truly to the last 

Had died before him. Weeping o'er their graves 

He long'd to be a sharer in their rest, 

And, in his frenzy, raised his lawless hand 

To smite himself; but some distracting thought 

(The chance that moulds how many an earthly 

act) 
O'erbridged the moment that had been his death, 
And he survived to suffer: — such is life. 

Ambition, oft the last dark solace left 

To genius fallen in sad degeneracy, 

Had lost for him the stimulus of excitement; 

For, e'en in brighter days when he had hoped 

To be successful, 'twas not for himself, 

But those who loved him; and he knew there beat 

No heart that loved him in the wide, wide world. — 

O earth ! thou art a dark and dreary waste 

When there are none to love us — none to love ! 

For life becomes, in its sterility, 

A winter without hope of coming spring. 



GUV. 



63 



He thought to lose remembrance of himself, 

Of that which Jiad been, and what niigJit have been, 

In sin's dark-whirling maelstrom. Driving on 

Before the passionate storm within his soul, 

He ran from vice to vice without a care — 

Without a fear; as some ill-fated bark, 

Driven before the unrelenting gale, 

Flies to its ruin. Soon he learn'd to laugh 

In mock derision at all sacred things ; 

And sainted virtue he did call a name — 

A thing without existence save in thought. 

Full many a gray-hair'd wanderer from the right 

Beheld, with wondering awe, himself outdone 

By that apostate Youth, e'en in the path 

Of darkness he had foUow'd all his days. 

For noble minds, though warp'd and sadly fallen, 

Proclaim their high supremacy above 

The shoals of mediocrity, and wear 

The laurels — though in Pandemonium. 

O what a change ! O what a dreadful change 

In that young Spirit! Once, that soul had been 

The dwelling-place of beauty, the abode 



64 



GUY. 



Of something like to heaven; — now grown, alas! 
The fell and darksome prison of itself. — 

How quickly sin doth dull the sense of right ! — 

He judged from her, the Lady of his love. 

That women aye are sirens, — that all smile 

Or to mislead or catch a golden moth. 

Th' ingenuous face, the shyly half-raised eyes 

Of innocent girls, he deem'd to be the arts 

By which he suffer'd ; and he look'd again 

Upon them with the blighting evil-eye. 

To him they were deceivers all, at heart, 

Whom it were well in justice to deceive; 

For, sure, deception is a game at which 

It is not meet that one should play alone. 

His voice was most mellifluous, like sweet rhyme; 

Its accents seem'd the language of true love ; 

And he could whisper in a lady's ear. 

Though 'twere dissimulation, that sweet tale 

As long as she could listen — too well pleased : 

And his impassion'd eye — O, 'twas not well. 

When it did speak a language sweeter still, 



GUY. 



65 



To feel its glances ; for it was enough 
To have seduced a more angelic being. 



Thus he descended to a sensual world 
Of libertines and wassailers, who mock'd, 
Over their wine, the peace they ne'er possess'd. 
But ever — in the midst of pleasure — dwelt 
With him the haunting knowledge, that, if this 
Were truly life, 'twere better to be dead — 
Ay ! never born ; and that the universe 
Were all a mighty failure, worthy naught 
But to be wreck'd and dash'd to utter chaos. 

There ne'er is such impenetrable night 

But, somewhere, from the earth a star is seen : 

There scarcely is a sorrow so intense 

But hope may glimmer through it: and, methinks, 

There is no heart so vile that it retains 

No lingering virtue. Though he had become 

A libertine, whose pallid cheek reveal'd 

His wild excess, that Youth was still at heart 

A seeming contradiction, — evil mix'd 



66 GUY. 

With much redeeming goodness. He had found 

The vices, which had seem'd Lethean draughts, 

Possess'd no opiate powers, but that they left 

Deep in his soul the rankling of remorse. 

And he perceived, what he had long in vain 

Endeavor'd to disprove unto himself. 

That virtue still were virtue, though mankind 

Were wholly sunk in baseness and in crime. 

In double wretchedness he lost desire 

To live ; he long'd for any change of state, 

E'en though it should be to acuter pain, 

From that benumbing agony of being. 

In those dark hours he look'd around upon 

The things which, in his childhood, had been 

loved. 
Remembering all the careless happiness 
Of those far halcyon days ; but they invoked 
Deep-thrilling sadness — bitter, bitter tears ! 
The magic of existence — the tried charm, 
Which maketh pleasing e'en unpleasing things — 
Had perish'd : the elixir of the soul, 
Transmuting every feeling at its touch 



6; 



GUY. 

To sonictliino- blcss'd or beautiful, was f^one, 
And would return to him — ah ! nevermore. 



But, with these melancholy thouj^hts, there came 
The recollection of the beauteous forms 
Of Nature, interwoven with his youth, 
And the delight they erst had given him. 
And, holding in his hand a goblet brimming 
With wine, he saw a forest-spring and heard 
The hurrying tinkle of its pearly stream, 
Plunging o'er mossy rocks, beneath the heads 
Of yellow crowfoot, pale anemones, — 
And in the dream, he dash'd away the glass: 
Then, bowing low his face upon his hands, 
He gave him up to fancy. — 

He beheld. 
In panoramic beauty, many scenes 
That once had been familiar (as the young 
Enthusiast erst had seen them), with a part 
Of the enrapturing pleasure he had felt. 
The far snow-crown'd Sierras loom'd again 
'Midst their salubrious atmosphere : the sea 



68 (^^y- 

Of prairie-grass and flowers, unbounded round 
Save by the sky's pure azure, waved beneath 
The scented gale : again, he sail'd at peace 
Over the sea-like lakes, and floated down 
Majestic rivers : and he pitch'd his tent 
Beneath the dusk pine-forests of the West, 
And heard the soul-felt music of their leaves; 
And, round his camp-fire, sat, in reticence. 
The black-hair'd Indians, in whose belts were seen 
The tomahawk, and knife, and dangling scalp. 
The picturesque wild aspect of these scenes 
Changed to full many a simpler home-like spot, 
That he was wont to love, — to hills and dells, 
Dotted with peasants' cottages, where streams 
Wound on in gentleness — beneath the boughs 
Of overhanging woods, — as blue as heaven. 
Awaking from that bless'd forgetful ness, 
How terrible was the quick-returning sense 
Of anguish ! — He would seek those happier 

scenes — 
Fly from the feverish world ! which aye to him 
Had been so dark a dream. In solitude. 



GUY. 



69 



Dwelling afar,- he deem'd that he might find 
A soothing bahii, — perchance, a fount of hope. 



And, thus, a wilhng exile, he became 
An eremite, an outcast from the world ; 
And, on that morning of the youthful year, 
He cast him down upon a mossy slope, 
Beneath the gnarled aged trees. It was 
A spot of wondrous beauty, lone and wild, 
Amid the primitive wilderness. Long time 
Before, while journeying through the West, he 

chanced 
To spy the hidden loveliness of the place ; 
Long, long it haunted him in memory — 
Its spirit of peace: and now, at length, most sick 
Of life and, oh, how weary ! he had come 
To dwell amidst its solitude. 

A change 
Already stole upon him. Seemingly 
He felt new animation in his blood, 
Caught from the life around ; his sunken cheek 
Was tinted faintly with the hue of health ; 



70 



GUV 



And his dark eyes, that still were wont to speak 

So eloquently ere his voice could fall 

In sweetness on the ear, burn'd with a fire 

More hopeful than their former languid light. 

Feeling the undertone of sympathy 

That wells from Nature to the heeding heart. 

He dream'd he would not there be all alone 

Among so many lives, — the only friends , 

That ne'er would be unworthy of his love. 

Yes, he could call them friends; for, musing there, 

He dream'd that all, all life shall be immortal 

If there is immortality for man. — 

Does not the lowest, shortest life, too, flow 

From the same fountain of all life, and light. 

And motion ? What is this fell monster, Death ? 

Who knows ? — There was, somehow, a mystic 

voice 
In the green leaves above, and in the flowers 
And fairy fields of moss on which he lay, 
And birds that sung so sweetly overhead. 
That told his heart, convincingly, they were 
Ail children of one mighty family. 



GUY. yi 



And he was but their brother. Then he dream'd 

That, after he should pass that portal dim 

(If death does open to a future world), 

He there should, haply, some time see a bower 

Like to the life of that in which he lay. 

And, stretch'd upon the violets, there behold 

The leaves wave o'er him in the gentle air. — 



72 



GUY. 



PART THE SECOND. 

It was a scene of quiet loveliness, — 

A varied landscape, broken here and there 

In spots of rugged beauty, but more oft 

Navell'd with shadowy dells and hidden nooks. 

In whose sequester'd grottoes gentle echo. 

Mocking the song of bird and babbling stream, 

Murmur'd a drowsy melody more sweet 

Than e'er were numbers of Sicilian pipes. 

A woody range of circumambient hills, 

Whose bases lapp'd with ever new effect. 

Sloped to the waters of a crystal lake 

Sleeping a tremulous crescent at their feet. 

But not a herd grazed on the hills, nor bell 

E'er broke their stillness. Following up the stream 

Falling a bright cascade into the lake. 

The nearest grange was situate leagues away 

Hard by a thriving border settlement, 



GUY. 



73 



Built on a railway that had pierced thus far 
To bear away the lumber of the woods. 
Without the pale of man's drear influence, 
Here dwelt the Hermit Guy. His hermitage, 
A cottage 'neath a clump of scattering oaks 
Upon the upland, overlook'd below 
An open prospect ; — fields, whose grassy growtii 
Was nature's primitive verdure, — many a cluster 
Of towering trees, that, standing far apart, 
Seem'd squads of giant knights, the foremost guard 
Of the great forest which, on either side, 
Stretch'd far unbroken, — and, beyond the lake. 
The mountainous hills, whose bluish extreme tops 
Amalgamated with the distant sky. 

Here he had dwelt a tweh^emonth since that day 
When, fleeing from himself and all the world, 
He sought a dwelling in the wilderness. 
He found the quiet he had wish'd, for few 
Broke in upon his solitude. He roved 
Where'er he listed o'er romantic hills 
And through the winding valleys of the woods, 

7* 



74 



GUY, 



And oft, for weeks, beheld but Nature's face 

And heard no voice save hers. But, thrice, along 

The margin of the lake, he heard afar 

Some hunter's hounds that, yelping, followed up 

The tawny fox; — soon did their baying die 

In hollow echoes 'neath th' o'erbrowing hills, 

Passing away as quickly as it came. 

And, once, in autumn, when the covey'd quails 

Were calling mournfully, what time the grouse, 

Drumming beneath the sumach-thickets — red 

With crimson crops of berries, — ^jarr'd the air 

As 'twere with sullen thunder, or whirl'd up 

Whirring, how startlingly, upon the wing; 

He met a sportsman from the distant town 

With bag of game, and pointer at his heels; 

But he nor spoke nor heeded him, and turn'd 

Coldly away, as did Napoleon, 

Upon his prison- isle, from those he met. 

The huntsman, o'er his shoulder looking back, 

Went on as one mfght go who half believes 

A spectre near him. Twice, perchance, beside 

There came a peasant searching through the woods 



GUV. 75 

For straying cattle, — going as he came, 

A bird of passage. Thus had pass'd the year. 

The only human voice which Guy had heard 

Was his old servant Allan's. Silent, strange 

Was this gray-headed man, who, following there, 

Became another hermit. Having loved 

His Master well in far more happy days, 

He linger'd with him in adversity 

Loving him still ; for he had been, as 'twere, 

The foot-ball butt of fortune in his youth. 

Seeing and suffering much and learning little 

Save that it was his fate: — thus, he beheld 

A sort of higher self in this sad Youth, 

And look'd upon him with a reverent awe. 

He knew his duty well, nor did he wait 

Nor ask instruction; very seldom seen, 

He spake not often, for he heeded well 

His Master's whim of silent loneliness. 

Possessing in proportion to his mind 

The power to dwell within himself and be 

His own companion, he was not, in truth, 



76 



GUY. 



Unlike his Master, who, if he but chose, 
Scorning mankind, could feed upon his thoughts — 
However sad, — and be not all without 
A nameless pleasure in unhappiness. 

As in the exquisite texture of his mind 

This Youth was different from all common men, 

E'en so he differ'd from all who have borne 

The name of hermit. Sensitive tenderness, 

Not often equall'd in a loving child, 

Was ever present in his heart, although 

He outwardly appeared to casual eyes 

A spirit fierce, and gloomy, and morose. 

The flowers of brook-fed leas and twilight woods, 

In their frail beauty, spirituality. 

Did make him love them. — Thus it was he brought 

Unto his cottage mental luxuries, 

For which how few had cared or even thought 

If cursed, like him, with hopelessness in life. 

He fiU'd full many a shelf, in his lone home. 

With volumes of encyclopedian lore. 

Whose fount exhaustless was forever sweet, 



GUY. J J 

Refreshing, — leaving in his wearied mind 

A calmness in its sadness, as the sun, 

Shining athwart the tempest, 'midst the gloom 

Enweaves the rainbow. He was not alone. — 

The spirits of the mighty dead arose 

Mysteriously from pages old, and held 

Their choicest converse with him; and he grew 

Familiar with the men whose deeds have thrown 

Glory o'er man. O, it is great to leave 

A book — a noble, truthful book — behind ; 

Which, though the form be dust in kindred 

dust, 
Shall ne'er grow old, — an immortality _ 
Of friendship with the wise and great to be. — 
Yes, he did love th' immortal fires of sone. 
Whose heartfelt numbers mirror up to view 
The soul's recesses — teaching us ourselves. 
His cottage walls were garnish'd with a {^^ 
Most beauteous pictures; and; within a niche 
Of logs unhewn in his quaint library, stood 
One form, an undraped Hebe, how instinct 
With soul — superlative loveliness divine ! 



78 G^y- 

And he could wake soft music sweet, which fill'd 
His heart with rapture — and his eyes with tears. 

A year had pass'd. More than accorded with 
So short a period, he was changed ; for time 
Had set a lasting seal upon his form. 
Some live scarce half th' allotted time of life, 
And die not younger than the hoariest men : 
Their lives are swifter, for they feel more deeply 
The wear of pleasure — anguish — ^joy — despair; 
Their minds consume their bodies. Finest oils 
Are most inflammable, and soonest burn — 
Returning to their elements. For, what 
Is the true index of our lives ? — the mind 
That suffers and enjoys. Ay, he was older — 
But still that canker was within his heart. 
Like fell malarial winds, in flowery climes. 
Which might have been a paradise on earth, 
Poisoning with their brooding pestilence — 
Making the spot a desert. 

I have thought, 
Musing upon the millions sweeping on 



GUY. 



79 



From birth to death, — the herds that do not 

think, — 
Who cannot reahze the mystery, 
The beauty, sorrow, evil of this world, — 
That 'tis a blessing to be one among 
The thoughtless, never cursed with gazing up 
At the bright Unattainable. For, sure. 
They are more happy. They do set their hearts 
On drossy trifles, and do think of things 
Easy to comprehend, and laugh when there 
Is naught to laugh at ; when they weep, they feel 
Not scathing anguish, for their minds are duller; 
And, like the skin-clad savage, they care not 
O'ermuch for future or dim past, and eat 
And drink, and sleep, and toil, and die. — Their lives, 
Like sluggish streams, flow calmly on with scarce 
A murmur. 

Genius is exceeding thought. 
And oft makes miserable the few that feel 
Its power within them; their wild passions have 
A Titan's might; their love is ocean-like, 
Boundless and deep; and tenderness of heart 



8o GUY. 

Is ever theirs. They see the glory of 
The universe, yet feel how terrible 
Are life's disasters, and its sorrows dread, — 
Love riven by death, the sphinx-like riddle, death. 
Their lives are like swift-flowing mountain rivers 
That dash o'er horrid dizzy brinks, and whirl 
Down beautiful in sprayey splendor. Though 
The sun doth crown them with his rainbow-hues, 
Below are chasms where midnight darkness reigns. 
And waters seethe in torment and in strife. 

Whether he sail'd along the sky-blue lake, 
The snowy bellying canvas of his boat 
Catching the summer gale, — or, if he walk'd. 
At morn or eve or brightly-beaming noon. 
Over the fields, or through the whispering woods 
Where peace doth seem to dwell, — or, if, at night, 
He stood beneath the stars or sad-faced moon 
Or tempest rushing swift along the sky ; — 
He aye was haunted by the demon — thought. 
If he could have but lived like those who pass 
Existence in the senses, not the soul. 



GOV. 8 1 

Enjoying thoughtlessly, or those who, in 

Their narrow-mindedness, are wont to deem 

The petty actions of their little lives 

Sufficient to fill up their being; he 

Had been more happy : but these were denied, 

And he, in true superiority, 

Was miserable. As one deform'd oft feels 

A strange desire to gaze upon a glass 

To view his own deformity, he felt 

A fascination, which he could not break, 

Constraining him to ever brood upon 

His sadden'd lot. Where there were none to 

hear 
Save the tall trees, the mossy-mantled rocks, 
The streams, the flowers, the birds, the restless 

airs, 
His long-familiar friends, he spake his thoughts 
And fancies freely. He was wont to roam 
In waywardness, unheeding where he went, 
Free as the winds, to hold deep converse with 
The scenes around about him. These few scraps, 
His meditations and wild colloquies 



82 GUY. 

(But when and where 'twere wearying to relate), 
May serve to show the tenor of his thoughts. 

" It is not strange the peerless Lancelot 

Was fabled to have dwelt, in youth, with her 

The beauteous lady of th' enchanted lake ; 

For fable intertwines the lovely forms 

Of Nature with the stories of her knights. 

And with their beauty tempts us to believe ; — 

And what is lovelier than a forest lake ? 

Ah me ! if beauty still possess'd the power 

To make me happy, floating, as I float 

Upon this almost waveless lake, beneath 

The dreamy shadows of the trees that stretch 

Their leafy branches far o'erhead, methinks 

I could not be but happy ! But a mind, > 

Corroded with the darkness of itself. 

Colors all visual objects with the hue 

Of its own fancies, making them, as 'twere, 

A mirror to reflect its wretchedness. — 

Fathoms below the surface o'er the sand 

And rocks and shells and pebbles black and white 



83 



GUY. 

The fish glance in the sunlight momently 
Like meteors through the water : far beyond 
Yon bosky promontory, sails unscared 
The wild swan, snowy as the clouds that sail 
Along the sky : ha ! now the osiers green 
Are shaken on the shore ; the antler'd deer 
Bends down its graceful glossy neck to drink — 
Now bounds away; the air is redolent 
Of melody, and quietude, and peace: 
But I agree not with the scene, — the sole 
Dark blot upon its brightness and repose ! 



** Yes, even now, the charm of beauty weighs 

Upon my senses stiflingly, like odors 

From dewy tropic flowers. The sun-bright hills, 

Stretching in many a winding ridge along 

Yon quiet valley till the wreathed oaks 

That crown their distant summits are resolved 

To clouds of dusky azure ; — yonder stream, 

Plunging with wild tumultuous melody 

Into the lake, — the glittering Minnehaha 

Of this sequester'd vale, — forever singing 



84 



GUY. 



The same sweet laughing song that Nature taught; 
The warm June sunshine, streaming over all, 
And photographing, on the lake, the form 
Of leaf and bough above; tJicsc and the thousand 
All-nameless charms that, intermingling, blend, 
Forming the whole, are all how beautiful — 
How beautiful ! 

" Alas ! my soul accords 
Not with the scene! — The sweet-breath'd wild-rose 

hangs 
Over the rocky ledges of the shore, 
Drooping so low the wavelets almost kiss 
The pendent leaves ; and, o'er the roses, drone 
The honey-laden bees continuously. 
Like spirits winging through Elysian vales. 
Hark, through the last year's leaves, 'neath yonder 

elms, 
The graceful chipmunks, screaming, run at play 
In frolicsome delight ; they feel the joy 
Of thoughtless, free existence — blessed beings ! 
I would not rob them of their gladsomeness 
E'en though 'twould make me happy. — O thou sky! 



GUY. 



85 



How canst thou bend so placidly above, 

As if beneath thy sapphire-arched dome 

There were no crime, no misery, and no death, — 

Nothing less pure than thou ? To me, the sun 

Is virtually extinguish'd, for his beams 

Serve only to make visible the gloom — 

The shadow o'er my soul. The loveliness 

Of Nature breathes but sadness: Hope, sweet 

Hope — 
Where is she? that she smiles not for mine eyes." 

" How obvious — how mysterious is life ! 

To thoughtlessness it is not wonderful ; 

But unto him who pries into its depths 

It ever grows more complicate and dark, 

Until — as he were gazing on the sun — 

The light at first beheld becomes a blot, 

And he is struck with blindness. Is there one 

Who, searching in th' recesses of his heart. 

Finds he is not a stranger to himself? — 

Man knows not whence he came, nor where nor 

what 

8* 



86 G^y- 

Shall be his destination. Through a world 

He knows as little of as of himself, 

He journeys toward a beetling precipice 

Wrapp'd in eternal night ; and when he falls — 

What is his fate ? Alas, the sagest sage 

Can tell you what you know — that he is dead. 

Ay, death is still inexplicable death ; 

The same dull, stifling, chilly torpor dread, 

That, when the earth was in her infancy, 

Fell o'er the good, the beautiful, the brave, 

The old, the young, the infamous, the wretched, — 

Freezing alike the blood within their veins. 

And leaving to the broken-hearted ones. 

Weeping around the bier, a lifeless thing 

Men call a corse, which, though too well beloved, 

Gives with each icy kiss of its set lips 

A thrill of nameless horror. — Who, to-day, 

Knows more than this of death's dim mystery ? 

They, who have laid some loved-one in the grave. 

Know only, in their woe, that mother Earth 

Reclaims her children all again to be 

Hid in the bosom that did nourish them. 



GUY. 87 

"The flowers arise in their allotted times, 

And bud, and bloom, and perish. Here, methinks, 

I catch the delicate fragrance of the lilies 

Now blossoming 'neath the sunshine on the lake ; 

Ah ! fragile is their snowy loveliness — 

Few days will pass ere they will float no more 

Upon the water. 'Midst the sea of air 

Their soft delicious odors will be lost; 

And, save to those who chanced to learn to love 

Their saint-like beauty, Nature still will seem 

Without a void, — as if no life had fled — 

Gone out forever. Why arise the trees, 

Leafy, and tall, and venerable with moss — 

Great canopies of shade, — except to die? 

They mark their ultimate doom in their sear leaves. 

When, driven before the killing autumn blast. 

They strew the woodland and the sad-voiced 

brook. 
The animals of land and sea and air, 
So full of life, so wonderful in form 
And mechanism of being, all are doom'd 
To the same destiny, — to live, then be 



88 GUY. 

No more : and man, great Nature's sovereign, man 

Is favor'd not beyond the very herds 

That he is wont to call his slaves ; — 'tis well. 

The world is one eternal, mighty death-bed, 

Where beings revel in their winding-sheets 

And reck not for their ghastliness. Strange — ^' 

strange — 
We all are in a feverish delirium, 
Dancing with Death. In but the passing moment 
How many a million lives have ceased to be ! 

" I dwell full often in a land of dreams. 
The twilight of the senses shrouds me from 
The visible world ; and, drifting from myself, 
I seem to wander in th' ethereal realms 
Of those departed. Round about me float 
The souls of those I love, and on the air 
Are voiceless whispers that are not of earth — 
Breathing the burden of enduring love. 
Soon, soon, the harsh reality intrudes. 
Awaking, then, I know that I have been 
'Mongst unsubstantial shadows, airy dreams. 



GUV. 89 

And forms that be not, born within a brain 
Throbbing and heakhless. 

'* At the dead of night, 
Have I not studied oft th' dark-woven spells 
Of sorceress and magician, on the air 
Casting their hellish potency of charms, 
Demanding from the dismal silent tomb 
One single soul ? The only answering voice 
Was the weird night-wind moaning o'er the roof 
Amid the darkness. Madden'd with despair, 
I cursed th' inexorable fiends of hell, 
Daring them from their fell abodes (as if 
There were such beings), that I might converse 
E'en with a demon. But they came not forth. — 
'Neath Hesperus pale, at twilight, I have stood 
In peaceful dells' embower'd solitudes, 
While in my heart there was a deep, deep woe — 
A longing all insatiable, and felt 
That, if the ones who loved me once so well 
Lived in a higher, better world than this. 
They would return to comfort me. Alas! 
The twilight deepen'd into night; I still, 



90 G^y- 

Still felt the same sad aching in my heart. 
Ah me ! I would that I could be again 
Th' unquestioning, loving, all-believing child 
That listen'd, while my mother told me erst, 
How we at length should go unto a land 
Where all the year is beauteous as the May : 
Yes, I remember once when I did ask 
If, in that bright, delightful world afar. 
The sweet pink apple-blossoms ever die, 
And if the robins ever cease their singing 
And building in the trees ; — a tear bedimm'd 
Her eyes, as, kissing me, she whispered — ;/<?." 



*' How slowly drag the hours away ! It seems 
E'en thrice a day since morn o'erblanch'd the hills, 
Ashy, and dun, and dull, with settling fogs 
And misty drizzling rain ; yet 'twill be long 
Ere lonelier night, when I may lay me down 
Upon a sleepless couch. Chill is the gale 
And comfortless, for summer; o'er the ground 
The smoke-like vapors creep ; and rivulets wind 



GUY, 91 

Over the oozy sod, soak'd to o'erflowing. 
Still does it rain, rain on in drizzly gloom ; 
The drops wind down the window-panes like tears. 
Would 'twere a tempest with hoarse-raving winds, 
Thunder, and driving clouds, and lightning dread, 
Like the bright sword of some fierce sky-god, 

shiver'd 
To glittering fragments high in heaven ! ah, then. 
My soul were calmer. But this housing dank — 
I may not plod o'er leagues of wold and hill 
To wear me to submission, and my mind 
Doth dwell on what it should not. All day long 
The dreariness without, within my heart, 
Hath found an echo; for my thoughts have been 
'Mongst parted hopes, the ruins of a life, 
And misspent days, where not a blossom sheds 
Soft fragrance 'mid the dust and ashes. Yet, 
It is not strange I thus turn back in thought. 
For I, in youth, believed the world to be 
Not what it is. To know the patriarch. 
With saintly beard and longest prayer, to be 
The veriest cheat of ail who learn to cheat 



92 



GUY. 



And call it business ; that, in this young land, 
The statesman's service is to steal, and damn 
Fair Freedom with his name as did Barere; 
That virtue sells for gold, and gold doth buy 
All righteousness ; that sordid, pitiful pride, 
Proud not of mind, but chance of birth or place, 
May flaunt and flourish, while true worth and 

genius 
Despair; that friendship, even sacred love 
Are falsehoods, gilded playthings of an hour 
For godless hands ; — yea, 'tis not strange that one 
Learning these things should ponder deep, and 

long 
Remember. Yet, I would forget — would lose 
Myself in contemplation of the forms 
Of Nature round me. When th' unclouded sun 
Shall beam again on earth, and gentle airs 
Fondle the flowers, and cheerfulness and joy 
Seem everywhere ; I shall forget the past 
In the Lethean beauty of the world, 
And feel the leafy pleasure of the woods. 
And catch a kindred quiet from the calm 



GUY. 



93 



Of many a clear Bandusia where the birds 
Descend to lave among the sedge and flowers." — 



" I had been dreaming of my childhood's home, 
Its hallow'd memories, and its well-known haunts, 
And of the ones I loved so long ago. 
Its days came back to me more sweet because 
Of indistinctness ; cross-bows, balls, and games 
Of hide-and-seek — a medley strange ; I grew 
Oblivious of the present. Though I knew 
'Twas but a fancy, then, methought, I felt 
The presence of my sister — dead long since — 
My earliest playmate. All inaudibly. 
Save that I inly heard, she sung to me 
A 'wildering melody of wild sad airs. 
My thoughts according ever with the strains — 
Their import pictured in mellifluent tones. 
She led me and Ifollow'd, drifting on 
Upon the mazy ecstasies of song. 
O ! how delicious were the soft sweet strains 
That whisper'd of the truth, belief, and joy, 

9 



94 



GUY. 



The loving words and actions of those days ! 
And, O ! how Hke the laughter of a child, 
Thrill'd with delight, arose the music, trembling 
With transport, telling of the sports and romps 
Of long, long summer days, of Maying walks, 
And hopes and fancies changing like the wind ! 
But, ah ! how heavenly sad the closing strains. 
Reminding me the loved-ones of my home, 
My father, mother, she, and all, are dead — 
Are dead ! and I alone — O God ! aloncy 



" How silent, save the rippling, rustling leaves ! 
'Tis midnight, and the moon is not in heaven ; 
But through the clouds that sail along the sky — 
Great winged monsters, — many a star looks down 
Now calmly from above. Ye golden Fires! 
For whom do your exhaustless lamps gleam on 
Eternally ? Not for this atom Earth, 
Nor all our little system : I may gaze 
In homage on your beauty, but ye know 
Not that I live. Our Sun, that unto us 



GLV. 



95 



Is blinding in his radiance, ye, most near, 

May see dim as the Pleiads ; but this world. 

Lighted with borrow'd gleams, dark as the hearts 

That dwell upon it, ye may never know 

Is in existence. Yet ye ever burn 

On in undying glory, bright as if 

Ye were the gods that some have deem'd you. — 

Ye 
Seem sown upon the sapphire pave of hea\'en 
So thickly that your gleaming locks might catch 
In tangled brightness ; but ye stand apart 
Immeasurably distant : even thus 
Our senses still mislead us. Thou ! dim band, 
Thou milky baldric of the universe ! 
Can we, who have resolved thy nebulous suns 
To systems e'en outnumbering the sands 
Of Ocean's shore, can we know aught of thee 
Beyond conjecture ? Thus, we ever sink 
Whelm'd in a sea of vagiie perplexity, 
Finding that all we know but teaches us 
That we know nothing. 

" Hark ! the answering owls 



96 



GUY. 



Hoot gloomily amid the echoing woods.— 
The clouds high overhead now fuse themselves 
In one unbroken blackness, from the dark 
Horizon to the zenith ; and the winds, 
Arising in their might, uplift a voice 
How like the rush of waters; now the rain 
Comes on with footsteps pattering o'er the leaves ; 
And, westward, sheets of radiance fitfully 
Illume the heavens, like northern lights. — Ha ! now, 
The storm- winds grasp the mighty oaks, and writhe 
With them in conflict ! Let the shatter'd boughs 
Crush me to earth ! sick — sick am I of life. 
O Storm ! thou wilt dissolve thyself in tears, 
Leaving the azure heavens again to be 
Peopled with stars, and traversed by the moon 
In changeful beauty, — but within my heart 
The tempest ne'er shall pass away on earth !" 



The Summer waned, and melancholy Fall 
Stain'd the doom'd leaves with his first touch of 
gold. 



GLY. gy 

It was a morn of this most lovely time : 

The air was soft as May, but fitful gusts 

Blew unexpectedly among the leaves 

With sighs foreboding, and, in sun-tann'd fields, 

Bow'd down the heads of yellow-tufted grass 

And bore the thistle's downy seeds aloft. 

Which, rising — vanishing incessantly, 

Symboird the ebbing moments of our lives. 

The mellow sunlight nestled lovingly 

O'er hill and valley and the tremulous tops 

Of the far-stretching forest, save when clouds. 

Snowy and shapeless, floating on through heaven. 

Cast many a moving oasis of shade, 

With weird effect, amidst the golden light 

Flooding the earth below. 

Within the calm 
Of the primeval woods, whose vaulted roof 
Admitted 'tween the yet unfallen leaves 
But scattering stars of sunshine, which did serve 
Only to make more dim its column'd vistas ; 
The Hermit Guy, with slow uncertain steps, 
Follow'd the winding labyrinths of a vale 

9* 



98 



GC/V. 



Toward the still lake below. A hurrying rill, 
Almost unseen beneath the velvet moss, 
Danced like a child, and murmur'd at his feet; 
But he nor heard nor saw it : flocks of birds 
Were chirping in the grapevines overhead, 
Picking the purpling clusters, and around 
The last of all the wild-flowers of the year — 
The pale-blue asters, well-nam'd forest stars, — 
Were blooming, soon to die ; but he pass'd on 
Unconscious of their presence. His wan face — 
O how 'twas changed ! a haggard, weary look 
Hung on his bloodless lips, and in his eyes 
A tearless agony — a hopeless woe. 
As fierce, contending armies' trampling feet 
Crush out the life of grass and tender flower 
In their fell havoc ; thus, within his heart, 
The warring powers of his own soul had trampled 
The flowers of peace, and truth, and love, and hope. 
Making his life a desert. 

As he went 
He mutter'd brokenly, " Relentless God ! 
'Tis well that thou dost make but few to feel 



GUY, gg 



This depth of suffering, — this all-crushing knowl- 
edge 
Of life's reality, — this last despair 
Of peace, of rest, — this lingering death in life ! 
Leaving the future not a single hope — 
No smiling phantom yet to lure — lure on 

Into its dreary, awful void ! " 

His brain 
Whirl'd with bewildering dizziness ; the air 
Grew suffocating ; greenish vapory clouds 
Shut out the light of day : — he, staggering, fell 
Swooning upon the mossy-robed ground. 

But there was one who, in his wretchedness. 
Forsook him not; who, sorrowing, mark'd the 

change 
In his pale face, and follow'd him that morn 
Feeling a strange presentiment of his doom. — 
Old gray-hair'd Allan dash'd upon his brow 
The clear cool water of that forest rill, 
And smooth'd the locks back from his pulseless 

temples, 



lOO 



GC/V. 



Calling his name, until the blood again 
Came rushing from his heart, and o'er his frame 
There crept a sudden tremor, and his eyes 
Lifted their lids ; then Allan raised him up, 
Tenderly as a father might a son. 
And bore him homeward through the woods and 
fields. 

When the dull stupor of the swoon had pass'd, 
His mind was crazed ; he, waking, dream'd ; his 

brain 
Became a whirlpool of confused thoughts, 
Creating in its wild imaginings 
A bodiless world of joy and harrowing woe. 
The forms we deem substantial were to him 
Impalpable. He dwelt no more on earth. 
He fancied, sometimes, he had died and pass'd 
To hell's dim second circle; that in which 
Francesca, driven before the blackening winds 
That ever rage along th' abyss obscure. 
Still hangs upon the once delicious lips 
Which damn'd her soul forever with a kiss. 



GUY. lOi 

" Ah me ! ah me ! shall I forever hear 
These souls forlorn complaining of their fate ? 
These hopeless cries, O God ! these piteous moans ! 
Freeze me and damn me with their agony 
More — more than my own misery. Alas, 
Why am I here ? — O thou abhorred shapo, 
With whom I whirl through this tempestuous air, 
I know thee not. Say, were thine eyes and cheeks 
Fairer on earth, that they could tempt the lust 
Of a seducer ? Here e'en thy embrace 
Doth thrill me not. — Oh ! would that I were deaf — 
Deaf to this woe, this surging sea of tears ! 
O man ! what homage dost thou owe to Him 
Who damn'd thee in thy birth ? The whole crea- 
tion 
Is one grand inquisition, poor, poor worm ! 
Where thou art tortured by the Hand that made 
thee." — 



102 GUY. 



PART THE THIRD. 

'Twas midnight; 'twas the wayward, stormy March. 
Around the cottage dash'd the furious winds, 
Rapping the lattice with a ghostly sound 
And moaning on in dismal semitones 
Most mournfully. Oft, for a time, the oaks 
And elms, that interlock'd above the roof, 
Would vacillate in the tempest with a roar 
Like the confused, wild voices of a host 
Of demons, while their branches in the night 
Did grasp each other ; then, perchance, again 
Would fall a startling stillness, which would weigh 
Upon the heart with vague suspense and make 
Each moment seem an hour; until, at length, 
The hail and sleet would dash o'er pane and roof 
Pursued again by all th' awakening winds. 
'Tw^as such a night as those in which we feel. 
In sympathy with the storm that is without. 



GUY. 103 

A shiver to pass o'er us, though not cold ; 
For, pondering on the past, which is a dream, 
And unknown future, which shall be a dream, 
And on the present, — then a sea of thought 
Comes o'er us that doth make our hearts as sad. 
As gloomy as the night; and we behold, 
As 'twere, the many homeless ones exposed 
To the all-pitiless tempest. 

But, within 
That cottage, brightly burn'd the fire, whose embers 
Did wink, and roll, and glow, like Argus-eyes; 
And from the ceiling hung a lamp whose blaze 
Shed cheerful radiance. It was silent there 
Save from the tumult of the storm without. 

Gazing within the embers of the fire 

That seem'd to change in keeping with his 

thoughts, 
Old Allan sat in meditation lost. 
With forehead resting on her hand, whose shade 
Made half-obscure her features, there was one 
Whose face was pensive, pale, yet beautiful. 



104 



GUY. 



Who could she be, that thus had come afar 

To this strange dwelling? In the lamplight 

streaming 
Upon her half-bow'd form, her yellow locks 
Hung o'er her shoulders even to her waist 
Like some rich, glittering mantle. 

She arose 
And, passing gracefully with noiseless steps, 
Approach'd a bed that stood within the room. 
And, drawing back the curtains, let the light 
Upon it fall. Emaciated, wan. 
There lay a sleeper, — yes, 'twas Guy. She smooth'd 
With delicate touches, from his pallid brow 
The damp dark hair ; and, bending low, she mark'd 
That he slept calmly. Would he wake again, 
As he had done so long, unto a world 
Of phantasy ? Would his dark eyes again 
Look on the friends that minister'd to him, 
And know them not? Ah me ! that horrible look. 
As if the soul had left its tenement — 
Would that return, and, brooding o'er the face 
Long wont to be the mirror of deep thought, 



GUY. 



105 



Dissolve the heart to pity ? Days before 
A change had come upon him ; he had sunk 
As with a deadlier illness. As he sleeps 
He hangs upon the verge of death. At length, 
Perhaps, the end has come ; and he, who dared 
To search into the mysteries of the tomb, 
Must now succumb to Death — all-conquering 
Death. 

The Lady gazed upon him as he slept: 
Anon hot tear-drops gather'd in her eyes 
Dimming her sight, as silently they fell. 
She brush'd them from her hastily, and turn'd 
To draw the curtains back, when suddenly 
She saw his face o'erflush, and he awoke. 
Arising on his arm whose wasted strength 
Would scarce support him, he look'd wonderingly 
At her who stood before him. She perceived 
That he was conscious, that his soul again 
Look'd out from eyes not wild, expressionless. 
"Where am I? — who are you? — O Genevieve! — 
Yes ! I remember in that dreadful dream 



io6 ^'f^^^- 

An angel of all beauty oft did stoop 
Down from^a better world to comfort me — 
Yes — yes — O yes, 'tis Genevieve !" 

She turn'd 
And would have fled, but he did motion her 
To draw more near : ** Stay or I die" — he gasp'd, 
Sinking again exhausted on the couch 
In utter helplessness. 

Beside the bed, 
Sobbing, she kneel'd, and whisper'd in his ear : 
" O Guy ! forgive me that I dared to come. 
I did intend to leave ere you should know — 
I knew not you would thus awake." — 

He gazed 
Steadfastly in her eyes : *' If you forgive me — 
Me, who have cast a blight upon your life, 
Stay till I die or know that I shall live." 

Again she whisper'd something in his ear; 
And then with voice just audible she said, 
" Think not of me, — my lot has not been all, 
All misery." And then she bade him rest. 



GUY. 107 

Placin<^ a soothing cordial to his lips, 
Promising she would stay; and soon again 
He slumber'd peacefully. Then Genevieve 
Bade Allan leave her there to stay with him ; 
And, when he had departed from the room. 
She, sitting with her head bow'd on her hand, 
Wept through the long, lone watches of the night. 

Alas ! how many thoughts that are most sad — 
Misgivings, recollections, — like dim ghosts, 
Haunt one who wears the lingering hours away 
Watching beside the bed where death may come 
At any moment. Then the loves and joys. 
That are remember'd to have been most sweet. 
In long-pass'd days of happiness, appear 
A mockery; the heart, grown chill with dread. 
Appreciates the instability 

Of life, love, beauty, pleasure, strength, fame, — all 
Life's petty hopes and selfishness. It seems 
A wonder, then, that, when we quaff tlie cup 
Of mirth and sensual pleasure, thoughts do not 
Intrude e'en with th' intoxicating draught 



io8 G^y- 

Dashing its sweets with gall. What pledge hath man 

For one poor moment's bliss beyond that which 

He is enjoying ? Daily doth the sun 

Arise and set; his coming and departure 

By repetition seem a certainty, 

Losing their strangeness : yet, more common far 

Is life's drear wreck of hopes ; for every day 

Crushes and withers even to the death 

How many ! — leaving them without remorse 

Among the ruins of the past. To-day, 

We revel, laugh, are gay ; to-morrow, weep 

O'er one whose life we would have died to save. 

We follow still the rising-sun of Hope, 

Like one who, gazing on some distant scene 

That charms the sight, walks backward through a 

place 
Of many pitfalls. Stop! perchance thy feet 
Are on the awful edge. — A day, an hour 
May plunge thee in the terrors of despair. 

Thinking such dismal thoughts, and of the past 
Of her own life, she wept full oft until 



GUV. 



109 



The hazy dimness of that morn of March 

Lighted again the mist-o'erclouded earth. 

But when the eyes of that pale sleeper oped 

And still they spake with reason's light, she smiled 

As if there were no sadness in her heart, 

And sweet — her voice was, ah ! how low and sweet, 

Seeming the voice of happiness. 

How much 
The tender touches of a woman's hand 
Can smooth the front of sickness! Like the stir 
Of w^arm, caressing winds among sweet flowers, 
Are her all-nameless kindnesses : the dew. 
Falling upon the thirsty flowers at eve. 
Is like her sympathy : her soul-felt words, 
Expressing much beyond what they express, 
Fall like a balm upon a suffering spirit. 

Days pass'd : and, slowly, scarce perceptibly. 
He, who was poised so imminent near to death 
A breath had turn'd the balance, gain'd again 
In strength. Days pass'd : and that strange horrid 
hue, 

10* 



no (^^^■ 

As if th' infectious monarch of the tomb 

Had breathed a blight upon his cheeks, became 

A less appalling pallor ; power to speak 

Sweetly as was his wont return'd with new 

Desire of converse. Then they, who had been 

The willing slaves to him in his sore need, 

Told of his sufferings in the previous months. 

Allan related how in early fall 

That dreadful malady of the mind had settled 

Over his life ; how through the winter long 

He did commune with strange phantasmal fotms — 

Inhabitants of lands which were but dreams ; 

How he declined upon th' approach of spring, 

Sinking until he seem'd to stand within 

The threshold of the grave. And Guy replied 

That long ere frenzy seized upon his brain 

He was aware of his impending doom. 

As by the lurid clouds that roll malign 

The traveller knows ere long the hot simoon 

Will come descending terrible ; e'en so, 

He saw the tempest that was gathering o'er 

To scathe him with its might. Could he compose 



GUY, 1 1 1 

His thoughts to peace? — as easy might his voice 
Quiet the turbid deep. 

The while they spake, 
Leaning upon the window, Genevieve 
Look'd out as if across the brown bare fields, 
For tears she wish'd to hide were on her cheeks ; 
And, standing there, she humm'd as to herself 
A cheerful air to prove she was not weeping. 

Then they were silent all, each seeming loth 

To break the stillness. Musing on his life's 

So strange vicissitudes, Guy traced it out, 

In thought, from cloudless infancy unto 

The moment it had grown a blank, — from joy. 

And peace, and beauty, till it was o'erwhelm'd 

And lost within the maelstrom of despair. 

But now did not the hallow'd light of love 

Beam on his soul ? Did not love's cynosure, 

At which bright Hope might light her lamp anew. 

Arise in heaven ? Ay ! there were two great 

hearts, 
Such as he deem'd were not in all the world, 



112 G^y- 

That truly loved him ; rising from their trial 
Of pure affection, o'er his path they shed 
Benignest influence sweet: yet — yet, for him, 
There was an end in life. 

The twilight dim 
Gather'd within the room till they no more 
Could see each other's faces, ere a word 
Disturb'd that charmed silence. But, at length. 
When through the evening hours on diverse themes 
They held choice converse, blending with his 

voice 
There was a something new, as 'twere, a magic, 
That made the listeners happy ere aware. 



Delightful — how delightful is the Spring ! 
The scarce- heard rustle of her airy garments, 
Which are the leaves, and flowers, and tender 

grass,— 
The thousand voices that from every brake 
Breathe welcome, echoing on the golden air, — 
Are all exuberant with voluptuous music. 



GUY. 113 

The realization of a hope deferr'd 
Is her long-wish'd-for coming ; her warm breath, 
The fragrance of her tresses, and sweet smile, 
Are like an houri's of the seventh heaven. 

When changeful days — in which Dame Nature 

knows not 
If 'tis mild Spring or Winter drear — are pass'd ; 
The service-berry in the lonely woods 
Outspreads its snow of blossoms ; then, ere long, 
The yellow violet, and the wind-flower white, 
And small spring-beauty, pied with stripes of pink, 
Rise through the leaves amidst the forest bare, 
While o'er their heads the maple's tasselly blooms 
Crimson the twigs. When clumps of thorny 

plum 
In sunny dells burst into flower, and pink 
Crab-apple blooms shed fragrance sweet — how 

sweet ! 
The delicate leaflets shoot from every spray. 
Soon dogwood flowers are in the woods, where 

birds 



114 ^^^• 

Sing in wild concert ; and each verdant lea 
Is shower'd with gold — a myriad dandelions. 

How brightly shines the sun ! the blush of youth 

Suffuses once again the aged earth ; 

A new-born splendor, as if some deep spell 

Of magian had commanded from the realm 

Of Mab her fairy light, glows over all 

Awakening Nature. Blue — unclouded blue ! 

Is all the sky; which, as in childhood erst, 

Looks down upon a world of joy, romance. 

Ah me ! the murmur of the unheard brook, 

The search for bright-eyed flowers, the pleasant 

shade. 
The hum of wild-bees, grass so rich and green, 
Invite us to the woods and fields until 
The heart is sick with longing ! E'en to one 
Whose hopes are like the crisped autumn leaves. 
The May, with all its million lives that start. 
As 'twere a new creation, into being. 
Is full of dreamy melancholy joy — 
Delicious sadness. 



GUY. 



115 



'Gainst that cottage wall 
There stood an open portico, which look'd 
Far southward over many a lovely scene. 
Beneath its rough-hewn roof the zephyrs soft 
Did love to linger through the long May-days, 
Sweet from the odorous honeysuckles wild 
That overhung the shrubs about the door. 
Around its unbark'd, mossy columns clung 
Virginia creepers, whose embowering leaves 
Hung darksome, casting o'er the seats below 
A secrecy of shade. Aloft, the trees 
Spread their fantastic boughs, whose foliage 

breathed 
Idyls divine of Dryad-melody, 
And, waving ever, made the sunbeams dance 
Like bodiless spirits o'er the grassy ground. 
O, there 'twas sweet on such calm, dream-like 

days 
To loiter hours away, to list the thrush 
Warble his wild incessant notes, and, faint, 
To catch the turtle-dove's low mournful call 
Among the distant trees. 



Il6 GUY. 

There, often, Guy 
Would sit, scarce able yet to wander far ; 
And, sometimes, Genevieve would read to him 
Some tale of gentle deeds, of ladies fair 
And gallant knights and tournaments of old. 
Or, bard sublime, whose soul-subduing rhyme 
Charms the rapt heart like Ocean's wild sad music. 
O what a spell the witchery of a voice 
Melting and sweet and heavenly, casts upon 
The burden of a song ! As pearly mist, 
Glowing a haloey glory round the moon. 
Adds to her beauty ; thus, doth such a voice 
Cast round a song the halo of its cadence. 

Beneath that wind-stirr'd canopy of vines 
Sat Guy, one morn, while yet the dewdrops hung 
Upon each leaf and flower in that cool spot. 
" Ah ! would that I were other than myself. 
That I might think not ! Newly does the earth 
Bask in an atmosphere of gladness, peace. 
Song, beauty ; spring-time's gentle airs — they 
seem 



GUY. 117 

The flutterings of the unseen wings of spirits, 
Whose pinions bear the scents of Paradise ; 
The very knowledge that the spring is brief, 
That winter swiftly comes, now is not sad ; 
Earth's mask'd like heaven : but I am not of those 
Who may be happy. O how sweetly sing 
A thousand songsters! some have just arrived 
Weary with journeying from the warmer South, 
Some have endured the rigor of this clime, — 
But they do reck not for the past. That storms, 
Hoary with driven snow, have bleach'd and wreck'd 
Their last-year's nests, they care not ; they enjoy 
The present, nor bethink them of the past. 
The future. List, the woodpecker's drum-like 

roll— 
The cawing crows: those sounds to me, long since, 
Were O how welcome ! They no more awake 
Delight, — they speak not to a sinless soul. 
Ah, well, to every heart save mine the May 
Is joyous — hope's own month ; its brightness fills 

me 
With melancholy strange. My days are autumn 



Il8 GUY. 

And change not, save they swiftly bear me on 

To a drear winter that will never end. 

My heart is dark — O God ! have I not sworn 

To crush these thoughts ? to bar them from ni)- 

mind ? 
To be myself — myself? Have I no will ? 
Must I be driven by thought's impetuous habit 
On, on, forever on, — a storm-toss'd bark 
Without a rudder? No; it shall not be. 
The world is not what I have dream 'd it is — 
It may be made the dwelling-place of peace ; 
'Tis bright and beauteous ; 'tis my eyes diseased 
That mar its light with darkness. Man is not 
What I have vainly deem'd him : O how much 
I've been myself the dupe of my own self! 
Wearing my cap and bells, like other fools, 
Unconsciously. Are there not two that love — 
That love unselfishly ? one deeply wrong'd ? 
Yes, there are some 'mong men who are at heart 
Not villains ; some most noble, but how few ! 
Yet, being few, they are more truly precious. 



GUY. 



119 



" I will not think ; I'll not be sad again ; 
'Tis most ungrateful thus to overcloud 
The sunshine of pure love in other hearts. 
Has she not pray'd, whose love is mine, all mine, 
That I should cast away this sadness ? gloom ? 
Alas ! what priceless treasures I have miss'd — 
How much of that which had been bliss to me 
By giving joy to others, I have lost 
By being thus unhappy. But a tree, 
Canker'd and blasted, bears not goodly fruit : 
A heart inured to care and lengthen'd woe 
Becomes as bitter as its nourishment, 
And may not change to sweetness. Can 1 quaff 
A purer than my dreggy cup of life ? 
Ah, no ! the past is with me ; terrible, dark, 
Mysterious, dream-like void ! I cannot shake 
Its shackles from me. Still its awful spirit 
Returns and broods, by seasons, o'er my soul, 
Till, like the poor, despised old king, I cry, 
O let me not be mad ! not mad — not mad." — 

With airy footsteps, like the prairie fawn's. 
Came one beneath the shrubbery of the yard 



I20 G^y- 

To where he sat, dreaming of his strange fate. 
A moment gazed she on him silently, 
While morning's incense-airs, enfolding her, 
Rippled her garments and long glittering hair. 

"Ah Guy! why are you sad? I " "Genevieve! 

Forgive me. Now I am not sad, my love ; 
The mists of morn are scatter'd when the sun 
Looks down from heaven ; the sunlight of your eyes 
Dispels the twilight that oft gathers o'er me. 

I would ever hear your soothing voice — 
Would look into your face and feel the light. 
The love-light of your eyes I then I should be 
Unhappy never. O my Genevieve, 

1 would that I might kiss you thus — thus — thus! 
Beneath your streaming hair, o'er lips, eyes, cheeks, 
More oft than there are several stars in heaven ; 
Might clasp you ever, ever in my arms 

Thus closely, closely ! feel your beating heart. 
Your quick sweet breath, your cheek 'gainst mine, 

yea, all 
This yielding form to thrill me, thrill me through, 



GUY. 



121 



With an electric current of deep warmth — 
A tempest of the bliss of love ! My soul, 
How beauteous is the crimson of your cheek 
Flushing and fading ! Ah ! my wind-blown lily ! 
Drooping and sinking thus upon my breast, 
How much I love you ! Heavenly beautiful 
Were those bright eyes when I could look in 

them — 
How blue ! now, hidden 'neath their long-lash'd lids, 
They are more lovely that they are conceal'd ; 
Ha ! now, that they do shyly open — look 
Up at me, that again I drink their lustre, 
They are a thousand times more fair than ever ! 

** Ah, yes, I would forever be empaled 
By the bless'd bondage of this snowy arm 
From all less heavenly. Is your love, like mine. 
Pure, deep, divine, eternal ? Read these kisses 
I shower in ardor on your lips — a language 
Deeper than words, — and tell me from your heart. 
Ah, can you whisper but a single yes ? 
But, 'tis enough ; foi", O how much, how much 



122 GUY. 

There is in that word yes — one syllable, yes ! 
I might say yes and others might say yes, 
Yet all be nothing; but when you do breathe it, 
It is an oath more worthy of belief 
Than the most solemn oath of all the world. 
O wrap me in that love, O be my shield, 
Supporting though supported, my own life — 
Light — only love ! Aye let your soul flow out 
And fill me with itself, as now I breathe — 
Live in the throbbing heaven of thy embrace !" 

Lock'd in each other's arms, long time they were 
Thrill'd with the sea-like ecstasy of love. 
And spake no word. 'Twas silent all around, 
Save many a bird was singing and the boughs 
Breathed their leaf-melody. 

At length, in tones 
Sweet with the spirit of his love, he spoke : 
" I do bethink me now of one I knew 
Long since, who seem'd to animate the earth 
With beauty, glory, love, and cast o'er all 
The hue of fairy visions. Long, how long, 



GUY. 



23 



I dream'd ere waking. In those days my heart 

Well'd with emotions, wild, impetuous, 

Yet pure as mountain springs that gush a fount 

Of hquid crystal. Well do I remember 

We stood one eve beneath th' unclouded sky, 

And watch'd the myriad stars to die aloft 

As the calm moon walk'd up the verge of heaven. 

I see her now o'erhalo'd by the light. 

The mystery of the moon : I hear again 

The sweet, sweet lies she spoke, and I believed. 

That night, as home I went, this crime-cursed world 

Was bright and pure and joyous ; I forgot 

Tis full of evil. Scarcely did the earth 

Make one diurnal round ere I did know 

That she was false — false as the meteor wan 

Which lures but to destruction. Then the world 

Grew dark, the sphere of sorrow, crime, and death ; 

And I forgot all that is better in it. 

Thus I became what you beheld me first, 

And I have suffer'd. — 

" But I loved her not 
As I adore you now, O my own life — 



124 ^^^• 

Not as I love you now, my more than love — 
My teacher of forgiveness, lasting truth ! 
Ah ! why did fate not crush me, only me, 
With all — redeeming you from such deep woe ?" 

As on the nerves of smell the exquisite scents 
Of dewy hay-fields fall, so on the ear 
Fell her sweet, gentle voice when thus she spoke. 
Though tears, hot, bitter tears, were in her eyes : 
" In every life there are some dark, dark days 
That it is well forever to forget. 

let us rather think of happier times 

Than If I, homeless, loved you still the same, 

Was true to you (and, by that Spirit Divine, 
Palpable on the very air we breathe, 

1 swear it), what do matter all my trials ? 

You said you loved me : 'twas not wholly false, 
Else why should it have proven true at last ? 
The past be past : its sorrows — leave them with 
The lifeless hopes, the vain regrets, that haunt 
Its Stygian darkness. Only one dread day 
Will I recall, for on that day there broke 



GC/'V. 



125 



A light from heaven. I knew not that you lived, 
Till he, the best of all mankind save you, — 
Most noble Allan, — bade me journey here 
To see you die. I came — to see you live ; 
O my beloved ! like these enfolding arms, 
Let present bliss surround us and shut out 
The past; and, wedded as we now are wed 
By love's enduring compact, let us think 
Of that which may be, not of what /lat/i been, — 
Of happiness through love, — of infinite worlds. 
Through whose progression love shall lead us on — 
Most blessed star ! — to the ne'er-coming end." 

The sun had set ; the stars look'd dimly down ; 
Like courses of blue rock far to the west, 
Loom'd up the cloudy battlements of the sky ; 
And pure as tears of joy that hang suspended 
Upon the lashes of a woman's eye, 
A million dewdrops on the tall, cool grass 
Had gather'd. O'er the mirror of the lake 
There floated on the air pale forms of mist. 
That seem'd to him, who stood beneath the verge 



126 GUY. 

Of the still, incense-laden woods, the spirits 
That dwell within the shadow-haunted grots 
Beneath that stilly water. 

When the night 
Deepen'd and darken'd o'er the changed earth, 
Until the cottage on the slope above 
Grew to a glimmering blot, then faded out 
In gathering gloom around it ; in the heart 
Of Guy, who wander'd by that waveless lake, 
Settled again that melancholy strange. 
Why was he sad ? he knew not. That fierce war, 
That raged so long, had almost pass'd away. 
He doubted not that all or good or ill 
Is ever ultimate good ; that all may be. 
By growing ever better and more wise, 
Almost content and happy; that no life 
Shall perish ; that the veriest blade of grass 
Is pregnant with the soul-life of th' All-Good, 
And, though it change and wither, cannot die. 
O what a sage philosopher is Love ! 
The soothing rhetoric of his gentle voice 
Is mightier than convincing argument ; 



GUY. 



27 



For 'tis more sweet than are, to him wlio plods 
All day 'neath summer's sun, the deep, cool 

draughts 
From shady wayside springs: his presence, smiles, 
Are balmy panaceas to the heart 
Sadden'd and weary, teaching it to trust 
The government of all things to that Law 
Supremest, that pervades the universe. 

Why was he sad ? he knew not. — 'Tis the fate 
Of those who long have suflfer'd much to be 
In part as they have been ; the mind is slow 
To break from its accustom'd trains of thought. 

" Methought I heard a snatch of some sweet song, 
Far-distant; sure, 'twas not the west-wind sighing — 
The wind is hush'd. — Ah ! yes, it is a song. 
Awaking silent forest, lonely field, 
Ravine, and bosky hill-side, with the heaven 
Of its wild cadence. 'Tis a song I made 
Long since, long since, in solitude : ah ! list" — 



128 (^^y- 

" E'en chosen pleasures cease to please ; 

The wine of life 's a mocking cup. 
Like sailors whelm'd in stormy seas, 

We grasp at straws to bear us up. 
Are they not wise that are not wise, 

Who single out some thing of earth — 
Some gilded plaything, paltry prize, — 

And toil, forgetting gloom and mirth. 
And never see with truthful eyes 

How transient are e'en things of worth ? 

" I threw a stone into the lake — 

The wavelets circled to the shore 
And shook the tall, green sedgy brake, 

Then 'twas as glassy as before : 
Thus roll the little waves of life, 

The deeds that mark our short career ; 
The joy and woe, the peace and strife. 

Incumbent on our being here; — 
A ripple in the ocean rife — 

A moment in how many a year !" 



GUY. 



129 



" Would it were longer that I still might hear 

That voice's music ! O how like the anthems 

Of angels, heard amidst drear realms of chaos, 

Was that sweet voice upon the shadowy night ! 

If I did know not whence it came, 'twould seem 

Titania singing to King Oberon 

Upon some mossy islet in the lake ; 

But I do know who only upon earth • 

Can breathe such sweetness. O my love ! rhy love ! 

Tis thou that sing'st to let me know that thou 

Art lonely waiting — waiting for my coming. 

Again the heavenly magic of that voice 

Falls faintly on the ear ! Yes, I will go ; 

It is not well that I should be alone. 

She waits beneath the trees ; yes, I will go — 

Her love is true, true as the changeless laws 

That roll the countless suns through yonder sky. 

She is my world of love ; with only her 

In this wild, lovely wilderness of the West, 

However long it is my lot to live, 

Methinks I shall grow better, more content, 



1^0 



GUY. 



Till, haply in the future, mine may be 
A life less sunless, days, in part, of peace.' 
Again, how sweetly, as he climb'd the hill 
Fell on his ear the burden of that song — 

" Thus roll the little waves of life. 

The deeds that mark our short career 

The joy and woe, the peace and strife, 
Incumbent on our being here ; — 

A ripple in the ocean rife — 

A moment in how many a year!" 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 



3> 



PREFACE. 



There is an old story, now almost forgotten, 
that the Moxahala — the Indian name of a small 
stream that flows through the counties of Perry 
and Muskingum, Ohio, into the Muskingum 
River — derived its popular name, Jonathan Creek, 
from an old hunter and Indian-fighter who dwelt 
somewhere beside it more than a hundred years 
ago. This poem is founded on that story. 

Perhaps it may be asked why I have selected 
so obscure, local, and trivial an incident for the 
subject of a poem. If this be a defect worthy of 
consideration, I have nothing to offer in pallia- 
tion ; except, if there is any merit in the verses, 
an observation of Wordsworth on his own poetry, 
12^ 133 



134 LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

** that the feeling therein developed gives impor- 
tance to the action and situation, and not the 
action and situation to the feeling." 

Though I have lately revised and materially 
improved this poem, as Sir Thomas More says 
of Richard the Third, it is still somewhat " ill- 
fetured of limmes." It reveals its origin ; it was 
written at the age of nineteen. Yet, for me, it has 
a charm that has preserved it from the flames — 
the power to awaken that attribute of the mind, 
called by metaphysicians suggestion or association 
of ideas, which has such a wizard-like influence 
upon man, often making him happy or miserable. 
I never think of a line of it without remembering 
many a long botanical excursion, as lonely, de- 
lightful, and fruitless, judging from what I learned, 
as Rousseau's in his island-home, and, also, many 
a youthful hunting and fishing expedition, even 
more fruitless ; for I first conceived writing it, and 
composed a great part of it, while angling in the 
stream from which it takes its name. But to 
others this spell will be wanting ; they will view 



PREFACE. 



35 



it with the cool, discriminating eye of criticism. 
Be it so. I shall be content if it has sufficient . 
merit to please a few and induce others, perhaps 
more successful than I, to turn to a mine that is 
scarcely opened, — the Indian legends of our Land 
and the incidents of our early history, one of 
which Campbell scorned not to sing ; — tales, that 
would have been the delight of Scott, if he had 
been born an American, notwithstanding the curse 
of our yellow-backed literature. 

The brawny men of the border, both red and 
white, will soon be extinct. The red man is 
rapidly passing away before what, to him, is the 
blight of civilization, succumbing to the law of 
'* the survival of the fittest ;" and his antagonist, 
the Indian-fighter, is to be found now only in the 
wilderness of the far West. They met on the 
field where General Custer with his army perished 
bravely and rashly ; in how many thrilling scenes 
of our earlier history, recorded and unrecorded, 
they have shared ! With their peculiarities, vir- 
tues, and vices, they are worthy the contemplation 



136 LEGEND OE THE M OX AH ALA. 

of the philosopher; for they are phases of the 
eternal evolution of Nature, whose vicissitudes 
lead on we know not where, nor to what, in the 
immeasurable future. 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 



THE WAR-PARTY. 



'TwAS summer — sultry afternoon; 
'Twas silent, save the wild-bee's tune ; 
The arrowy sunbeams, streaming down, 
Gilded each tree's majestic crown, 
Yet scarce within that forest-dell 
A single bar of sunlight fell. 
'Twas twilight there : high overhead 
The aged trees their foliage spread ; 
And, e'en beneath them, saplings, grown 
Dense through that hill-girt valley lone, 
Upheld greenbriers in which there hung 
The nests where thrushes rear'd their young 
'Twas twilight there when noonday light 
Blazed from the heavens' unclouded height. 

137 



138 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 



Around a heap of embers gray — 
Replenish'd not since break of day, — 
In which, at morn, their meal to make 
Each broil'd his savory venison-steak ; 
A band of Shawnee warriors sate 
In council — haughty, brave, sedate. 
Far had they come from where the wave 

Of clear Scioto, gently flowing, 
Reflected in its crystal pave 

The trees upon its margin growing ; 
There was their village ; there old men 

Were angling in the tremulous waters : 
There were their maize-fields, where, e'en then, 

Labor'd their dark-hair'd wives and daughters. 

Wild turkeys' plumes, that glisten'd bright, 
The raven's plumage, black as night. 
And feathers, that once graced the form 
Of golden eagle midst the storm, 
Were woven in their ebon hair 
With savage art and wondrous care. 
And, painted, arm'd, and scant-array'd. 
Their sinewous limbs and osseous frames 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 1 3^ 

Seem'd mightier than the men's that made 

The glory of th' Olympic games. 
Long could they march, nor stop to rest ; 
Long could they starve, nor faint oppress'd ; 
The ills of savage life, the rain, 
Exposure, cold, and toil (the bane 
Of civilized man, who sickens, dies, 
Unshelter'd from th' inclement skies), 
Were their first memories; soon these grew 
Almost a pleasure, for they knew 
'Twas by such hardships they must grow 
In strength to bend their fathers' bow. 
To cast the lance, to chase the deer, 
To slay the bear, nor dream of fear, 
The coward vile to scorn, abhor, 
To learn the sanguine art of war. 

There's something in such men akin 
To broad-limb'd oaks that face the din 
Of many a tempest ; 'neath whose shade 
Their cradles, made of bark, were laid. 
And where in childhood's hours they play'd. 



140 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 



Ay, they are brothers to the hills — 
Are Nature's sons ; her spirit fills 
Their hearts : the ever-flowing river 
Is like their footsteps, restless ever. 

Cold, silent, calm, oft eloquent; 

With hearts that naught can make relent, 

Yet ne'er forgetful of a deed 

Of kindness till is paid the meed ; 

Sly, cunning, cruel, yet most brave ; 

Too proud to plead his life to save ; 

E'en though his heart should break, his eye 

Would shed no tear, he would not sigh ; — 

Such is the Indian : art and lore 

Ne'er calm'd his blood in ardor hurl'd ; 
Yet, once, though fallen now, he bore 

The sceptre of the Western World. 

The Chieftain tall, whose plumy crest 
Droop'd o'er his massy neck, address'd 
His comrades thus : " Ye braves ! when he, 
My Father, yon bright Sun, shall be 



LEGEND OE THE MOXAFIALA. j^ 

At rest, and in the sky's soft blue 
The eyes of myriad spirits view 
The deeds of warriors here on eartli ; 
Then may ye show your valor, worth. 
Oft has the death-song, sad and low, 
Proclaim'd the victory with the foe ; 
Oft have we seen our bravest fall — 
What! must we perish, one and all? 
The pale-face chief has slain a score, 
Of late, e'en at their wigwam door; 
Yes, he shall die ! The Evil Spirit 
Doth fill his heart ; why should we fear it ? 
List ! souls of mighty warriors cry 
For vengeance, vengeance ! He shall die. 
Long did he hide we knew not where ; 
At last, we know the panther's lair : 
Braves ! on the Earth, my Mother's breast. 
Let us, till dusk of evening, rest; 
Then for the capture — torturing fire. 
To glut our vengeance and our ire !" 
13 



142 LEGEND OF THE M OX A HA LA. 

Then, by the Moxahala Stream 
That flow'd all-waveless Hke a dream 
(Whose name till now was never sung 
Save, haply, in the Indian tongue). 
With many approving *' ughs," around 
They stretch'd them on the leafy ground 
And summer violets. Many slept; 

Some, smoking dreamily, watch'd the smoke 
As up it circled, roll'd, and crept 

Amongst the low-bent boughs of oak ; 
Some fix'd their arms : but not a word 
From any lip again was heard. 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 143 



II. 



THE INDIAN-FIGHTER AND HIS CABIN. 

Hid in a dark, secluded nook 
Beside where fell a moss-fringed brook 
O'er pebbles white, with gurgle low, 
In Moxahala Stream to flow ; 
A cabin, rudest dwelling, stood, 
Constructed, 'neath the drooping wood, 
Of logs of various size and length 
Regardless save to use and strength. 
And, growing o'er the bark-made roof, 
Were lichens like a bison's hoof 
And like the coarse and shaggy hair 
That clothes the savage grizzly bear; 
And with the brookside's clayey mould, 
To part exclude the heat and cold, 
The crannies in the log-built hut 
With careless hand were roughly shut. 



144 LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 



Upon the unhewn wall within 
Hung many a silky beaver-skin ; 
And, on the earthen floor, the hide 
Of bear and elk, full neatly dried, 
Was piled — the hunter's motley bed, 
With pillow soft, to rest the head, 
Of panther's coat of reddish brown ; 
And, just above, depending down 
From antlers fast against the wall. 
Were pouch, that held the rifle-ball, 
And powder-horn, long-used and dear, 
Adorn'd with carvings quaint and queer. 
And mark'd with many a mystic dot 
Each for an Indian warrior shot, 
Since on the Moxahala's side 
Its owner, lonely, chose abide. 
And in the centre ashes lay — 
Collected there through many a day — 
Upon a rock, whose wondrous worth 

(By playful Nature meetly shaped,) 
The hunter seeing, made a hearth. 

And left a hole where smoke escaped 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

O'erhead the logs and bark between, 
Where sweeping boughs, a leafy screen, 
Dispell'd the rising smoke unseen. 

In short, a mansion suited well 

To him who sought that place to dwell; 

Within, a low, poor, dingy room ; 

Without, seen through the forest-gloom 

By one that off a distance stood 

Amid the thick-set underwood, 

It seem'd but trees, promiscuous thrown 

By some dread tempest, mossy grown. 

The hunter in the threshold sat 

Upon a wolf-hide for a mat, 

With trusty rifle close at hand 

Ready to use should chance demand, — 

To send his foe, if seen around, 

To seek that happier hunting-ground ; 

And, sharing in the doorway seat 

Contented at his master's feet. 



•45 



146 



LEGE AW OF THE MO XA HA LA. 

Lay Don, a hound of savage breed, 
Yet faithful in the hour of need ; 
His master's friend for many a year, 
Sole sharer in his forest cheer ; 
The tried companion of his toil. 
Partaker in the chase and spoil. 

Two peers well suited to their life 
Of wild adventure, border strife, 
They seem'd by Nature form'd to be 
Each other's only company ; 
For Don had grown a grade above — 
Exalted by alchemic love — 
The brutish fierceness of his kind ; 
The master had as much declined 
By dwelling where no voice he heard 
That spake a soft or chiding w^ord, 
Nor saw a feeling tear to flow 
From eyes afire with joy or woe, 
And where regard for blame and praise 
Was cast away with other days : 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

And, thus, residing there alone 
Within a world that seem'd their own, 
They found an equal social sphere 
That made each other doubly dear. 

The woodsman was grotesquely dress'd 
In Indian style; his hunting-vest, 
Made by himself of half-tann'd skin, 
Was gayly fringed beneath the chin 
With bear-claws won in many a fray — 
The blood-stain'd trophies borne away ; 
Around the skirt — embroidery fine — 
Was many a quill of porcupine 
Wrought into beads, that glisten'd bright 
In various dyes 'tween black and white. 
The girdle round his brawny waist. 
With glittering wampum duly graced, 
Held, o'er his hip, the scalping-knife 
He used in close and deadly strife ; 
And, polish'd bright, — well did he know 
To use it on his hated foe, — 



47 



148 



LEGEND OF THE M OX AH ALA. 

His tomahawk within the band 
Hung dangling ready at command. 
His form, not heavy, tall and strong. 
Was stoop'd by hardships suffer'd long, 
Yet did his muscular limbs appear 
As agile as the prairie deer; 
And in his eye (that saw aright 
Full many a mile past common sight. 
And mark'd the least disturbance made 
In mossy nook and leafy shade, 
And watch'd as slow he stole around 
For signs of Indians on the ground,) 
There burn'd a fierce and sullen fire 

That gleams of piercing radiance shed, 
Which in the bravest would inspire, 

Scarce knowing why, a thrill of dread. 

His brow, where veins of blackish blue 
Stood, cord-like, plainly out to view. 
Was scarr'd and deeply furrow'd o'er ; 
And, scattered thin in patches hoar, 
His whiskers grew without a trace 
Where razor e'er had touch'd his face 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 149 

And, aye, withal, he bore an air 

Of settled hate or dull despair ; 

Yet, somehow, there was left behind 

A something, telling to the mind 

He once was loving, good, and kind ! 

Such in his curious scouting-gear 

Was Jonathan, the pioneer ; 

Whose name, in those old days, to speak 

Would blanch an Indian's swarthy cheek. 

His surname long has been forgot. 
Perchance e'en he remember'd not 
That word, whate'er it was, a name 
Obscure or haply known to fame. 
Which in that desert ne'er again. 
As whilom, fell from lips of men. 
Perhaps, that name in Albion long 
Was woven in many a silver song 
By ladye-love for errant-knight, 

Or 'broider'd on the favor's fold 
He wore in conflicts for the right 

And tournaments ablaze with gold : 



ISO 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

And, haply, proud of lineage old 
From Saxon thane or Norman bold, 
His ancestors could trace their line 
Through knights who fought at Palestine; 
Whose graven escocheons still attest 
Upon the tombs wherein they rest, 
That bravely warr'd they heart and hand 
'Gainst Saladin and his painim band 
To rescue thence the Holy Land. 
Or, yet, belike, of lineage low 
Crush'd by the weight of toil and woe, 
His fathers with their scanty store 
Fled to a barbarous, western shore, 
Pursued by priestcraft's hellish hate 
With burning brand in holy state. 

But why conjecture? 'Tis the same 

If high or low his family-name. 

So let it in oblivion sleep ; 

For, sure, the Shepherd knows his sheep 

Though wandering in the forest deep. 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 



51 



III. 

HIS YOUTH. 

His history, gather'd here and there 
From many a swain with hoary hair, 
I heard in quaint and rural phrase 
Told by the fireside's cheerful blaze, 
And at repasts full often shared, — 
By country lasses well prepared, — 
Where earthen bowls, by usage brown'd, 
With cider brimm'd, were pass'd around. 
And home-bred worth made all elate 
With joys denied the rich and great. 
And, if — endeavoring here to tell 
With studious care what once befell — 
Imagination frame a line, 

'Twill be to blend, to give control 
O'er rumors vague, and thus combine 

The lowly texture of the whole. 



152 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAIIALA. 

But be the story false or true 
As told by those who never knew 
The name of him they spake about 
Save Jonathan, the border scout, 
The moral still is worthy heed ; 
For every thought, and word, and deed, 
Have their effects. Who can foretell 
How long they last, or ill or well ? 

Erst in New England dwelt a child 
Upon whose birth Dame Nature smiled ; 
For, gifted with a love of truth 
And gentle heart that others' ruth 
Dissolved in sympathetic tears, 
And wisdom not beyond his years. 
He seem'd as somehow foredesign'd 

Of that most lucky, happy few, 
Who, asking little, seldom find 

The pathway barren they pursue. 
He was not born a Chatterton 
To think, aspire, and be undone. 



153 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

And, so, his boyhood was delight: 
The stillness deep of summer-night, 
The stirring grandeur of the storm, 
The tremulous lake, the swan-like form 
Of beauteous clouds, the stars, the flowers, 
Possess'd for him no moving powers 
Mysterious, such as some have felt ; 

And, yet, no vulgar lad was he : 
He loved too well ; his heart would melt 

O'ermuch at others' misery. 



'Tis said his home was just in sight 
Of village-spires of modest white, 
Whose evening bells were faintly heard ; 

'Tis said his home was one of peace, 
Where loving heart and loving word 

Made all but thoughts of joy to cease. 
O Love, Love, Love ! thou art the sole 
Eden of life : thou mak'st to roll 
The suns and worlds through heaven : the heart 
Is happy only where thou art. 
14 



154 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

'Tis said that, 'neath green mulberry-leaves 
That arch'd a lane, on summer eves, 
He drove the kine (some Bess and Spot 
Perchance) home from the meadow-lot. 
Watching the while lest he might tread — 
With shoeless foot — some pensile head 
Of sweet white clover, where the bee 
Droned, gathering honey ceaselessly. 
And, when the luscious mulberries hung 
Purple and ripe the leaves among, 
He climb'd the trees and long remain'd 
Till hands and lips were ruby-stain'd. 
And, when the kine were milk'd and fed, 
He drove them from the milking-shed 
Down through the winding lane again ; 
Where, if the dusk was gathering then. 
He hied him back from the silent spot 
Afraid of — sure, he knew not what. 

They say (I know not why) all day 
About some mill, he used to play. 



LEGEND OT THE MOXAHALA. J55 

Skimming flat stones from wave to wave 
Over the dam's wide-spreading pave, 
With the white miller's son and daughter; 
That oft he watch'd the foaming water 
Dash round the creaking mossy wheel, 
That whirl'd the buhr, where golden meal 
And snowy wheaten flour were ground. 

Ah well, well, well ! we all have seen 
Life's Maydays once, and, since, have found 

Never again their like, I ween. 

The boy desired to be a man. 

Lo, swifter than at play he ran 

In childhood's flowery, cloudless clime, 

Sped on the ceaseless sands of Time; 

And soon there dawn'd a wondrous change 

Expanding far his mental range. 

Till passion, with a deeper flow. 

Made joy delight, and sorrow woe. 

He felt emotions strangely strong 

Conflicting^ ever, rig-ht and wrong;, 



156 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

His heart the field with battle rife ; 
He saw the import — risk of life. 
But, still, the youth, contented not, — 
All fain would choose a happier lot, — 
Then sigh'd, again to be a boy, 
For thoughtless hours and simpler joy. 

But, gathering up his mite of care 
With sweetly-smiling Hope to share 
Its then but scarcely noticed weight. 
While she, sweet fabler, told elate 
How shortly in some happier day 
The load should all be cast away. 
And in its place the amaranth-flowers 
Of peace, cuU'd in the future's bowers, 
Should make his path with beauty smile- 
His heart the true Elysian Isle; 
He made the best of every ill; 
He conquer'd by the power of will, 
And struggled on as all must do 
Toward something dear to fancy's view, 



LEGEND OF THE MO XA HA LA. 157 

And toil and pain and error met, 
And oft behind him heard regret 
Upbraiding for some hapless deed 
When 'twas too late to e'er recede. 

And when to manhood's strength he came 

His life was labor still the same ; 

And, though full oft with sudden blight 

He saw the dream Hope pictured bright 

Resolved to naught, or worse, a tear; 

He deem'd though 'twere through doubt, and fear, 

And error, sorrow, pain, that He 

At length will lead his children home, — 
From higher worlds, that they shall see 

Why darkling they were doom'd to roam. 

He felt that every deed or thought 
With pure intrinsic goodness fraught 
Is in itself its own reward, 
Though none should heed it, none accord 
The plaudits due ingenuous worth ; 
That none can nearer reach on earth 
14* 



I^S LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

To man's desire, felicity, 
Tlian those whose aim it is to be, 
With unremitting, noble zeal, 
The furtherers true of common weal. 
He saw the victor yet should wear 
The guerdon olive in his hair; 
And, so, he gave the hungry bread 
And for the homeless found a shed ; 
And, lo, while soothing others' pain, 
He found his loss a wondrous gain. 

He loved a maid of rustic air. 
But rich in beauty far more rare 
Than Nature in a lavish hour 
Is wont to make a mortal's dower, — 
That simple treasure few possess, 
A heart of genuine gentleness. 

She loved him ; — why was he her choice ? 

I only know love's choice is right. 
O oft, how oft, her low sweet voice 

Gave him, when weak, redoubled might ! 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA, 

For woman's weakness makes her strong; 

And, with a myrtle- wand, the throng 

She sways with gentle — iron will: 

Ay, men, unweeting, all fulfil 

Her sweet behests, though spoken low, 

Resistless if her tears but flow, — 

Alike inciting weal or woe. 

In fancy, — as I, dreaming, raise 
The spirits of old Colonial days, — 
Methinks some village-bell I hear 
With merry chime outpealing clear. 
And see, slow moving up the aisle, 
Young Jonathan with beaming smile 
Conduct his blushing happy bride 
Half-fearful to the altar's side, 
And list the churchman's solemn rite. 
Through life till death, their fates unite. 



59 



l5o LEGEND OF THE MO X AH A LA. 



IV. 

HIS HOME NEAR SENECA LAKE. 

Not lavish was the husband's store, 
For virtue often seeks no more 
Than satisfies the present need ; 
And, wishing then to so proceed 
That 'twould provide a cottage-farm. 
And trusting to his stalwart arm 
To fell the woods with patient toil 
And cultivate the virgin soil ; 
He hied him to the lands beside 

The lone and lovely Seneca Lake, 
Upon whose waveless, crystal tide, 

Then, none but Indians' oars did wake 
Soft echoes, as they sought to find 

The wild duck's nest 'midst brake and reed, 
Or, near the shore, to shoot the hind 

When down she came to drink and feed. 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. i5 

There, with the neighboring settlers' aid, 
He built his cabin in the shade 
Of oaks, that might have not been young 
Since Coeur de Lion fought and sung. 

The huge tall trees, with rumbling crash. 
The pristine oak, and elm, and ash, ' 
Fell prostrate 'neath his echoing stroke. 
As when the Jove-hurl'd lightning broke 
The giants' dread, audacious strength 
And stretch'd them, quivering, at their length. 
Soon fields of black-soil'd land were clear — 
Whilom the covert of the deer — 
Before the sturdy pioneer. 

The Indian maize, with wavy leaves, 

The wheat-fields, gemm'd with golden sheaves. 

The fallow-land beside the rill. 

The cabin on the sloping hill, 

Look'd like a picture framed between 

Surrounding walls of leafy green. 



1 52 LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

The mistress of that sylvan grange 

Her humble household did arrange 

With homely taste and ceaseless care, 

Diffusing round a simple air 

Of heartfelt comfort by the spell 

That from her very presence fell ; 

For she, like Midas famed of old, 

Transform'd whate'er she touch'd to gold. 

And, humming some old ballad o'er 

That told of far Britannia's shore, 

She sped her wheel, scarce-seen, around 

With sweet, continual, droning sound, 

Forming with care the flaxen strand 

That, woven by the self-same hand 

And bleach'd beneath the solar light. 

Should soon be linen snowy white : 

As busy she, as poets say 

Penelope, with long delay, 

Chaste, laboring, wore her time away. 

How wondrous are the changes wrought 
Since those old days of simple thought ! 



LEGE AW OE TUB MOXAHALA. 



163 



Now, 'tis not meet or lady fair 

Or country lass should sit and spin ; 
Their work has changed. — Hark ! hark ! the air 

Is rent by rattling loom and gin, 
Where one man does a hundred's work; 
Yet all are busy : those who shirk 
Are but the drones, that serve to show 
What labors idlers undergo. 
Ay, 'tis the age of puissant steam, 
Of telegraph, and thundering beam. 
And mill, and anvil, whence the hum 
And stir of prospering millions come ! 
O Labor ! thou art nobly great : 
Behold each rich and populous State 
Thou nurturedst up ; — still westward rise 
Great empires, cities, destinies ! 
Yes, Lincoln, splitting rails, became 
The President, whose cherish'd name 
Shall live — until the death of fame. 

When Jonathan, with labor done 
At sultry noon or set of sun, 



164 LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

Turn'd homeward aye 'twas his to greet 

A happy smile, a presence sweet 

Awaiting at his humble door — 

Ah ! truly glad his toil was o'er. 

And, with a kiss, as loving yet 

As those in courtship none forget, 

The seal of welcome was impress'd — 

A balm that made his spirit rest ; 

O, 'tis not strange he thought him bless'd. 

At night when, through the forest, shrill 
Was heard the distant whip-poor-will, 
Or hungry wolves' protracted howl 
In answer to the hooting owl ; 
He told the tale of Plymouth rock 
Or read his Bible — all his stock — 
To her, whose knitting needles sped 
The while she heard each word he said. 
Thus, oft, an idle summer day, 
And evening sweet with scent of hay. 
And winter night when keenly blew 
The north-wind down the stick-built flue, 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 165 

He whiled away with legend lore 
Or conn'd his Bible o'er and o'er. 

With love and peace and happiness 
Such as a mortal's lot might bless 
(For love and virtue have the power 
To fill with sunshine every hour), 
They lived till years bequeath'd to them 
Two blossoms like their parent stem: 
A boy, in whom was plainly seen 
His mother's grace, his father's mien ; 
And, sweeter far, with auburn curl 
Shading a forehead white as pearl, 
The joy of all— a lovely girl. 

Ah ! sweet is life whene'er it flows — 
Though dash'd full oft with fleeting woes— 
With love's enchantment leading where 
The prospect charms, forever fair! 
Is life, whose golden cynosure 
Is love, that makes mankind endure 
So much, so much, when deep and pure. 
15 



^^ LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

But, O ! if Death relentless parts 
With icy hands such loving hearts, 
'Tis better far to be the dead 
Than living when all hope is fled — 
Than feel 'twere bliss to ne'er have known 
The heaven of love, forever flown, 
When left with woe, alone ! alone I — 

'Twas autumn, when the mellow air 
A sense of sadness seem'd to bear, 
And leaves of gorgeous red and brown 
And burnish'd gold fell rustling down, 
And o'er the distant hills a band 
Of gossamer haze seem'd fairyland ; 
That beauteous season few e'er know 
Save in Columbia's autumn glow, 
When deep Enchantment weaves around 
Her spells in every sight and sound 
Till Nature's self is full of rhyme, — 
The Indian's soft-air'd Summer-time. 

The eve had pass'd, and midnight shade 
Profound hung over wood and glade, 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 167 

And Stars aloft were twinkling bright, 
And softly sigh'd the wind of night ; 
Nor at the cabin, looming dim 
'Neath many a drooping, shadowy limb, 
Was felt the least portent of ill 
Where, save the night-bird, all was still. 

But, suddenly, howl and horrid yell 
As from the confines dim of hell. 
And helpless shriek, and dying wail, 
Fell mingling on the shuddering gale! 
And, in the cabin, all afire, 
Uprose the red man's whoop of ire — 
While tomahawk and scalping- knife 
Dealt common death to child and wife ! 
And, dancing wild, with menace dread 
And eagle-plumes upon each head 
And war-paint daub'd in hideous streak 
With mystic power o'er brow and check, 
The warriors, 'midst the spectral glare, 
Fierce, terrible demons of despair, 
Brandish'd their scalps of gory hair ! 



58 LEGEND OF THE MO X AHA LA. 

Long had the din of havoc ceased ; 
And, rising in the orient east, 
The sun look'd down as bright, serene, 
O'er smouldering logs and ruin'd scene, 
And woodland life, unheeding, gay, 
Pursued its self-same destined way, 
As if no heart was crush'd with grief 
To which but death could give relief. 

Yes, Jonathan — unconscious how — 
Escaped, though gash'd across the brow ; 
For 'twas his fate to struggle on 
Though hope had flown — forever gone : 
And there he stood and could not weep, 
Wan, woful, haggard ! by the heap, — 
The ruins of his home, — the grave 

Of children, wife, to ashes burn'd ; 
There all he loved and could not save 

Lay in the dying embers urn'd ! 
And, bowing low with no desire 
Save death beside that funeral pyre, 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

His quivering voice, so long suppress'd 
By choking anguish in his breast, 
Burst forth in wail and hopeless moan. 
" Oh God ! why am I left alone ? 
When all are dead I cherish dear 
'Tis death — 'tis death to linger here ! 
O ! would that fate had will'd that I, 
With those I love, should live — and die !" 

He heeded not the comfort given 
By many a heart with pity riven ; 
And soon his wavy hair was gray. 
Then from his eye a vengeful ray 
Gleam'd out, of unrelenting hate ; 
And then he half-forgot his fate. 
Oft, like a madman, cruel smiled ; 
And people deem'd his fancy wild. — 
Ere chill November came and went, 
From out that border settlement 
With ammunition, hound, and gun 
(Telling his future course to none), 
He turn'd him toward the Setting Sun. 
15* 



169 



I^O LEGEND OF THE MO X AH ALA. 



V. 

THE LAST CONFLICT. 

The sun had set; the crescent moon 
With halo wan had follow'd soon ; 
And Moxahala, shadow'd o'er 
By buckeye, beech, and sycamore, 
Flow'd gurgling 'neath the gloom of night ; 
And, 'tween the leaves that rippled light, 
Look'd, trembling, here and there a gleam 
Of starlight on the dimpling stream. 

With piercing glance and noiseless tread 
Quick from his hut the hunter fled 
(While Don, as stealthful, keeping nigh 
Glared fiercely round with savage eye), 
For, having cross'd the woody vale, 
He came upon an Indian trail 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

And all his deadly peril felt : 
Well did he know the place he dwelt 
Was sought by Indians far and near — 
To wreak revenge — for many a year. 

The Shawnee Chief had track'd the bear, 

At last, e'en to his hidden lair. 

And, stealing from the bosky glen 

With half a hundred ruthless men, 

Before 'twas his the foe to take 

He mentally burn'd him at the stake 

For many a murder'd warrior's sake. 

The red men, feeling sure the prey 
Was in his fastness brought to bay, 
Closed round the hut on every side ; 
And some the fiery brand applied, 
While others, yelling, turn'd to bind 
The dreadful foe they thought to find, 
And rush'd within with tiger-bound — 
But, lo ! no captive there they found. 



17 



72 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

Hark ! ringing on the midnight breeze 
Afar 'neath labyrinthian trees, 
A rifle shrieks with sulphurous breath 
Sending its message dire of death — 
The Shawnee Chief with dying whoop 
Falls, quivering, midst the motley group. • 
Ha! now amazement dumb appalls — 
A sharp report — another falls — 
O pale-face Chief, away ! away ! 
Loud, fierce, resounds the deep-voiced bay 
Of ghoulish forms, a horrid pack, 
That, howling, bound upon your track 
With bow and spear and gun and knife 
And tomahawk to take your life ! 
Away — away — go, seek the cave 
Where oft before, your life to save. 
With mystery deep, you did elude 
The hordes that at your back pursued. 
Ah hark ! they come with sounding tread 
And whoops that echo wild and dread ! — 



LEGEND OE THE MOXAHALA. 



173 



Dewy, and fragrant-breath'd, and pale, 
Came morn, with wakening voice of bird 

And bee, and cool leaf-stirring gale, 

And squirrel's chirp, mid branches, heard. 

'Twas on a hill-side's bluffy edge, 
Where rocks stuck out with mossy ledge, 
Where wavy-scallop'd ferns between 
The fissured rocks grew rich and green, 
And delicate flowers, to us unknown 
Save — hid from man — in forests lone, 
Bloom'd 'neath the trees that, arching high, 
Shut out the azure summer sky. 

Where ivy wild and grapevines clung 
To drooping shrubs that overhung 
The lichen'd rocks and shady ground. 
Beneath the ledge a passage wound, 
That, to a cavern dark and small, 
Led through a jagged, narrow hall. 
There Jonathan the night before 
Escaped the Indians in his flight ; 



74 



LEGEND OF THE MOXAHALA. 

He seem'd to vanish — be no more ! 

And they, with awe and sore affright 
And superstitious fancy fraught, 
Deem'd 'twas a demon they had fought, 
And hied them homeward full of thought. 



fc)' 



But Jonathan lay cold and dead, 
The cavern-floor his rocky bed; 
And on his bosom, clotted o'er 
With oozy drops of blackish gore, 
A ball had left its circle red ; 
And in his back an arrow-head. 
With shaft protruding, broke in two. 
Had proved its fatal guidance true. 
Yes, Jonathan, the pale-face Chief, 
Had found at last that sweet relief — 
Nepenthe for each earthly grief 
And e'en o'er him one mourner kept 
His vigil — yea, and, haply, wept; 
For think not man alone can know 
The bliss of love, the pang of woe:- 



LEGEND OF THE MO X AHA LA. 

With paws upon his master's breast 
And plaintive howl of deep unrest, 
His lonely dog, though all unheard, 
Implored a look, a loving word. 
And lick'd his master's cheek and hand, 
And seem'd to vaguely understand 
His soul was in a happier land ! 



175 



OLELA: 

A WANDERER'S VISION OF PEACE. 



i6 177 



OLELA: 

A WANDERER'S VISION OF PEACE. 



Continuous, falling, falling, falling, 
I heard the rain 
Against the pane 
So drearily to wax and wane ; 
And loneliness, both vague, appalling, 
Seem'd everywhere 
To clog the air 
Like some foreboding of despair ; 
Yet, while — that stormy night — my heart was 
teeming 

With fancies fell, 
I knew full well. 
E'en while I could not break the spell 

179 



l8o OLE LA. 

(For Psyche told me truly), 'twas but seeming 
Upon her breast 
She bade me rest, 
And there I laid me dreaming. 



II. 

I dwelt within a valley's space — 
The homestead of a rural race ; 
A cot my happy dwelling-place, 

With mossy thatch and arbor-tree; 
And round the vale on either side 
A wall of mountains, azure-dyed, 
Was rear'd aloft to ever hide 

And guard its pure simplicity. 



III. 

And through the valley, clover red 
And forest-phlox with nodding head 
A soft, delicious fragrance shed, 

As in some blossomy nook of Aidenn ; 



OLE LA. l8i 

And o'er the flowers a busy brood 
Of wild-bees cull'd ambrosial food, 
Or droned a drowsy interlude 

When homeward bound with honey laden. 



IV. 

There, arch'd by willows all the way, 
Where cattle dozed the summer-day 
And wind-flowers blossom'd all the May, 

A mountain brook with pebbly strand 
(The child of many a bright cascade), 
Beneath the tremulous light and shade. 
Went dancing to the pipe it play'd 

Adown the sheep-cropp'd meadow-land. 



V. 

And, hid deep in the copsy dell, 
On upland slope, and grassy fell. 
Was heard the sweetly tinkling bell 
With echo faint, from flocks of sheep ; 



32 OLELA. 

And near — while o'er the thymy ground 
With busy hp and munching sound 
The sheep would nip the herbage round — 
The shepherd loiter'd, half asleep. 



VI. 

There vain Ambition never came, 
The high and low were all the same — 
Life's frugal wants the proudest aim, — 

And care return'd not with the dawn ; 
For Luxury was all unknown, 
And Pride had long been overthrown 
By Love, that reign'd supreme, alone; 

Thus life's still current dimpled on. 

VII. 

In spring-time when the fields were green, 
The valley held a festive scene 
Where lad and lass with smile serene 
Wove garlands in each other's hair; 



OLELA. 

And, roving far in search of flowers — 
The blushing maids like rosy Hours, — 
Were thrill'd by love's bewitching powen 
And then were doubly, doubly fair. 



VIII. 

And in the drowsy summer weather 
They pitch'd the odorous hay together, 
And gather'd lilies in the heather 

While resting through the sultry noon ; 
And when at last the sun-tann'd hay 
For all the year was mow'd away, 
The youths and maids, with laughter gay, 

Would dance beneath the misty moon. 

IX. 

When Autumn, far more lavish, bold, 
Than alchemists renown'd of old, 
Transform 'd the very woods to gold ; 
They roam'd the hills with forest grown 



83 



1 84 



OLELA. 

And gather'd — as they patter'd down 
From many a treetop's gorgeous crown- 
The ripen'd nuts, as russet brown 
As were the lasses' tresses blown. 



X. 

And when, at night, the angry blast 
With ghostly footfalls, moaning, pass'd 
Round sylvan grange, and wildly cast 

Fantastically the sifting snow ; 
By cheerful firesides through the vale 
True lovers told that sweetest tale. 
And quite forgot the wintry wail 

In bliss that only lovers know. 



XI. 

What lofty calling is so great 
As that of him, of low estate. 
Who, asking ne'er a change of fate, 
Dwells far away from heartless pride, 



OLE LA. 185 

And, miiiMinsf not in fashion's coil, 
Sees pleasure pure in healthful toil, — 
To prune the tree and till the soil 
And fold the herd at even-tide ? 



XII. 

For sure content is almost heaven ; 
And he, to whom such wealth is given. 
Is bless'd beyond who long has striven 

While love of grandeur fired his breast. 
Ah, yes ! give me the rustic cot, 
The meadow, wold, and garden plot, — 
The glory of a lowly lot, 

Where Peace may come and build her nest ! 



XIII. 

In that sweet dale with one, a friend, 
I many a happy hour would spend 
Till eve, when glimmering shadows blend 
Shutting the landscape from the eye ; 



86 OLE LA. 

As angling in some willowy nook — 
Like Walton erst at Shawford-brook, — 
With converse low and busy hook 
We knew not hours were fleeing by. 



XIV. 

My home — most dear beyond degree 
In highest heaven, it seems to me, 
If souls are bless'd as souls can be, 
Each has a dear, delightful home, 
'Neath towering trees that sigh above, 



'Midst birds and flowers and hearts to 
The dovecot to the carrier-dove 

When, weary, it has ceased to roam 



XV. 

There Olela, the light of all. 
Who held my chosen heart in thrall, 
Dispell'd, e'en by the fairy fall 
Of her soft footsteps, every care ; 



ove, 



OLELA. 

And, as the clouds beneath the sun 
Grow luminous that were dark and dun. 
She smiled — and homeliest objects won 
A kindred radiance, rich and rare ! 



XVI. 

In laugh and motion, form and face, 
She bore that untaught native grace 
That Goethes dream and Raphaels trace- 

Ah, rarely found upon the earth ; 
And loveliest, most majestic part 
Of perfect beauty, void of art, — 
The heaven within a guileless heart 

That overflows with love and worth ! 



XVII. 

Full oft beneath the dark green leaves 
Of vines that wreathed our cottage-eaves, 
At evening, when the earth receives 
A pensive stillness, mystic spell, — 



87 



1 88 OLELA. 

We spake a language silent, sweet ; 
And while our hearts with passion beat 
Our eyes were with a tale replete 

That voice could never speak so well. 

XVIII. 

Her speech was music soft and low, 
The tongue that love should ever know ; 
And, if she sung, a tear would flow — 

Celestial portals stood ajar. 
Ah ! 'mid the myriad flowers of spring 
Fann'd by the zephyr's scented wing, 
Again, methinks, I hear her sing 

These stanzas to the Evening Star : 

XIX. 

I. 

Pale Star! that shimmer'st o'er yon mountain peak 

While yet the sky 
Is tinged, like some shy maiden's blushing cheek, 

With crimson dye, 



OLE LA. 189 

2. 

So long before another star is seen 

To tremble through, 
With faint, faint spark, the heaven's serene 

Unclouded blue, — 

3- 
How beautiful thou art! What hallow'd calm 

Of memories dear 
Thou bring'st and pour'st upon us — sweet, if balm, 

Or, cause of tear ! 

4. 
'Tis deem'd thine is the hour when lovers learn 

To dream and sigh, 
And hearts, while stolen, all-meaning kisses burn, 

Throb warm and high. 

5. 
Coy vestal Eve, enrobed in gray and brown, 

Thyself dost love ; 
Else, why, when she is here, dost tJwu smile down 

From heaven above ? 
17 



go OLELA. 



6. 

Thy golden beam is not all joy alone; 

E'en though thou shine, 
For aye, upon thy love from yon high throne. 

She'll ne'er be thine ! 

7. 

Ah, yes ! e'en now, thy pensive influence fills 

The twilight air, 
That, kissing all the roses' cheeks, distils 

In tear-drops there, — 

8. 

By thy soft light, that brightens more and more 

As shadows fall, 
Here, let me bow beneath the sky — adore 

The Soul of All ! 

XX. 

Yes, home is more than all beside, 
'Tis where the saintliest hopes abide : 
My cot, where time would swiftly glide 
Yet be an endless merry May, 



OLELA. 

Was all a world of love to me, 
A fairy isle far 'midst the sea 
Where care and woe could never be, — 
Enchantment smiled them all away. 



XXI. 

For, waiting ever. Love would stand 
For Olela's most sweet command; 
And wheresoe'er she placed her hand 

She left the charm of beauty's power, 
Ennobling toil and rural life 
Beyond the madding din and strife 
And envy, like a demon, rife 

Within the prince's pennon'd tower. 

XXII. 

O ! who, on earth, can be more bless'd 
Than he that, in a loving breast 
(A universe — and all possess'd), 

Is cherish'd 'mid some scene of peace ? 



191 



1 92 OLE LA. 

Such simple life, all bliss the same, 
Such true content, without a blame, 
Are more than all the vaunted fame 
And glory of both Rome and Greece ! 

XXIII. 

T waked And, driving, driving, driving 

Before the gale, 
The heavy hail 
Struck pane and roof, amidst the wail 
Of trees and winds in conflict striving; — 
And, ah ! my heart 
Without a start 
Felt storm and night its counterpart, 
Nor, from my worn and weary Soul, could borrow 
A golden gleam, 
A hopeful beam 
To stream within so dark a dream — 
No radiant vision of a bright to-morrow ! 
For life, to me, 
Where'er I be. 
The past hath fiU'd with sorrow. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



17* 



193 



OURANOPETES. 



I. 

I REMEMBER — and tlius I am cursed. 
O how sweet were a Lethean measure 
To deaden the memory of Pleasure 
When the bright-tinted bubble is burst ! 
When dreams, that, while dreaming, 
Seem teeming 
With bliss, 

Are no more ; 

Ah ! why are we doom'd to deplore 
That something we ever shall miss ? 



II. 



To live is to dream hath been said : 

Oh ! the phantoms that flit without number 

195 



196 



OURANOPETES. 



Throufrh the dusk of that feverish slumber- 
Perchance 'tis to zvake to be dead? 
Some dreams there are stranger, 

And change ere 
The rest; 
It is well 

Not all are predestined to dwell 
In that land — or blasted or bless'd. 



III. 

Dare I tell of a Being most fair, 

On whose face of all beauty for hours 
I gazed, 'neath the tremulous showers 
Of her tropical sunshine of hair ? — 
Till her presence it fill'd me. 

Near kill'd me 
With love; 
Nor I knew 

That a Being so bright was untrue,- 
They had cast her from heaven above. 



O URANOPE TES. I gy 

IV. 

O her eyes were so lustrous and wild ! 
Their cerulean strangeness — their glances 
Enchain'd me in magical trances ; 
Ah, I knew not their light was defiled. 
And her hands were so slender 

And tender 
And white ; 
What a thrill, 

When I press'd them, they gave, — 'twas 
a chill 
Of intoxicating, 'wildering delight ! 



V. 

We were wandering one morn in a wood : 
From the fruit-laden branches all mossy, 
Hung parasites, crimson and glossy, 
Shedding fragrance around where we stood ; 
In that forest enchanted, 

O'erflaunted 
The sod, 



)8 OURANOPETES. 

Weeping dew, 

Every blossom delicious that grew 
In the river- fed Garden of God. 

VI. 

We were loitering alone in a wood : 

I had drunk of her Circean sweetness — 
The nectar of gods in completeness ; 
She had kiss'd me e'en there as we stood. — 
Where was she? Lo, dimmer 

Did glimmer 
The dawn 
From the skies, 

For my day was the light of her eyes : — 
She had vanish'd — -oh ! where had she gone ? 

VII. 

How sweetly, from far through the trees, 
Echo'd peals of her musical laughter ! 
" I will fly," then I cried, " follow after" — 

But white lilies entangled my knees. 



OURANOPETES. jqq 



Her mantle of whiteness, 

Her brightness 
Of hair 
I could see, 

Fluttering wildly past many a tree, 
As she sail'd like a god on the air. 

VIII. 

In that forest were streamlets of light 
Dancing on under thickets of roses ; 
There were dim-lighted labyrinths and closes, 
Though the sun arose glorious and bright: 
And around me was ringing 

The singing 
Of birds. 
Whose wild glee 

Cast a mystical sadness o'er me, — 
They were carolling sibylline words. 

IX. 

All day, through that wilderness strange, 
I follow'd the Soul of my vision — 



200 O URANOPE TES. 

Was led by a Laugh of derision 
In a world of enchantment and change. 
When twilight descended, 

Attended 
Despair 
On my heart ; 

And I knew it would never depart, 
For a demon did prophesy there. 



X. 



Then the stars became lurid and fierce, — 
Like tiger-eyes, hunger'd their fires ; 
And the myrtle grew thistles and briers ; 
And each blossom all thorny to pierce : 
Yet I follow'd, unheeding 

And bleeding, 
That Voice 
In the night. 

Though it rung with a fiendish delight,- 
Alas ! it bereft me of choice. 



O URANOPE TES. 20 1 

XI. 

At length, e'en the stars overhead, 
Despising my terrible anguish, 
Began to appallingly languish — 
And soon they were rayless and dead ! 
Then hopelessness rushing 

Came crushing 
Me low ; 
And I pray'd 

The Destroyer would hear me and aid, 
And swoon'd in the midnight of woe. 



XII. 

It seem'd as if aeons had flown 
Exceeding in vastness the ages 
Of the world with its rock-written pages,- 
Perchance, 'twas a moment alone, — 
When a Power bent o'er me 

And bore me 
To earth : 
18 



202 OURANOPETES. 

I awoke, 

But my spirit was humbled and broke; 
And life was not life but a dearth. 

XIII. 

Now my soul it doth hunger and thirst 
For a Being of exquisite beauty, 
Whom to worship did seem but a duty, 
But whose smile is a sorcery accursed. — 
When dreams, that, in seeming, 

Are teeming 
With bliss, 
Become woe ; 

O God ! 'twere a heaven below 
To forget what we ever shall miss. 



LINCOLN 

AN ODE. 



'Evracpiov 6e tolovtov odf evpug 

ovd' 6 TzavdafutTup ufiavpuaet xpovog 

SiMONIDES. 

I. 

There is no earthly word or deed 
More worthy heaven, Prometheus-Hke, sublime, 

Than his who, deeming death the meed, 
Undaunted, calm, speaks tr6th condemning crime. 
And, 'mid unnumber'd foes, 
Injustice dares oppose. 

II. 

O ! 'tis most sweet, when life seems vain, 

And doubts appall, and tears are fain to flow, 

203 



204 LINCOLN. 



To feel that Man may here attain 
Such heights exalted in this world of woe ! 
Acts angels stoop to view — 
Yea, might aspire to do. 



III. 

Lincoln ! thy name shall ever shine 
A beacon bright amid our nether gloom. 

Till Freedom, Virtue perish, thine 
Shall be a theme of praise — an envied doom 
And Greatness bend the knee, 
Though emulous, to thee. 



IV. 

How few, how few have graced the earth 
Whose names with thine 'tis justice to unite. 

Where is thy peer for simple worth ? 
Who like to thee 'mid danger's darkest night? 
Serene whate'er thy fate ; 
Without ambition, great. 



LINCOLN. 



205 



V. 

Thou second Founder of thy land ! 
Small need hast thou of choral hymns of praise ; 

Thy vindicating heart and hand 
Wove thee bright wreaths of never-dying bays, 
That blossom full as fair 
Though twined not in thy hair. 

VI. 

Thou smot'st the shackles from the slave, 
Didst slay a demon, bid a curse depart; 

Thou fill'st, alas ! a martyr's grave, 
Though sepulcher'd within thy Nation's heart ! 
Thy monument thy name, 
Festoon'd with deathless fame. 

VII. 

'Tis well to weep when those are dead 
Who make the world not better ere they go ; 

But, when great saintly souls have fled 
High heavenward, let no heart a sorrow know, — 
But swell with joy and pride 
That such have lived and died ! 
18* 



SOLILOQUY 



OF ONE RETURNED TO THE SCENES OF HIS 
CHILDHOOD. 



I've traversed scenes renown'd in song, 
I've mix'd with pomp and chivalry, 
Yet dearest is this. spot to me, 

This simple spot, remember'd long. 

Canst thou be dead, my playmate ? thou 
Whose name is link'd with youth's delight ? 

Ah, Maud ! methinks I see thee now 
With eyes and tresses dark as night. 

Below those hills where jut the rocks 
Above yon shady mountain stream. 
And, dim as objects in a dream, 

Are mirror'd back in massy blocks, — 
206 



SOLILOQUY. 207 

We gather'd lilies on the ledges, 

That, as Narcissus loved of eld, 
Bow'd coyly o'er the mossy edges 

To view themselves as he beheld. 



'Tis strange, though thou art pass'd away. 
That Nature smiles the same as then ; — 
E'en heaven's white cloudlets sail again 

Just as we watch'd them when at play. 



Ah, Childhood — flowery May of life 
That swiftly passes toward December, 

And only leaves 'mid after strife 

Thy sinless raptures to remember — 



How truly sweet thy transient day ! 
Who can but scarce repress a tear 
While thinking when nor care nor fear 

Cast shadows o'er life's sunny way ? 



2o8 SOLILOQUY. 

Oh for a spell to vanquish fate — 

Her woven woof of woes to sever, — 

I'd live a life with joy elate 

A thoughtless child, how happy ever. 



For, but in merry childhood, dance 

The sunbeams, leaves, and gurgling streams 
(More rapturous than heaven-pictured dreams), 

With all their beauty and romance. 



Yes, we may live and toil and learn 
And fancy we are growing wise, 

But, still, methinks we ever yearn 
To see again with childish eyes ! 



Ah, Maud, with patience unexcell'd 
We angled here for mountain trout, 
And hail'd their capture with a shout 

Whose echo up the valley swell'd ; 



SOLILOQUY. 209 

While I, with self-important look, 

Would act the true gallant the while, 

And fix for thee the bearded hook 
Repaid by an approving smile. 



And oft together by the hour 

We read some witching fairy-tale, 
How fairy-knights, encased in mail. 

Would scale their ladies' dizzy tower ; 



Then, gathering loosen'd stones and moss. 
We'd build a castle grand and gray, 

And moat it with a frowning fosse 
To guard its portals night and day; 



And thou wouldst be the princess fair, 
Confined by some magician's doom 
To wait within the castle's gloom 

The knight who would its dangers dare. 



2IO SOLILOQUY. 

Then, storming battlement and wall 
Right nobly, with a knightly mien, 

I razed the fortress, court and hall, 
To rescue thence the captive Queen. 



Was it not joy — earth's purest bliss? 

Though childish pleasures long are pass'd 

I'll still remember to the last 
The sweetness of a boyish kiss ! 



Well — well — perchance, from some sweet star, 
Which haply is a heaven for thee. 

Thou seest me now, sad, lone, afar, 
And shed'st, e'en there, a tear for me. 



AN HOUR OF SLUMBER. 



Deep silence reigns ; — it is the hour of slumber ; 
And o'er how many a heart the drowsy wizard 
Is weaving now his wondrous woof of phantasy. 
Some are most happy ; — hopes they long have 

cherish'd 
Are bursting into flower, yea, soon to ripen 
And be but nothing. One doth kiss his sweetheart ; 
Another has his riches — vain Golconda ! 
Another reck'd of fame, — the Iris-bubble 
Is thricely sweeter than if it were real. 
Some wander in a mystic land of Faerie 
Where everything becomes just what it is not ; 
And others — so this wizard has decreed it — 
Oh, what they suffer ! death and hell and torture. 
This one has slain his father, and for nothing ; 
That one is to be hang'd by those that love him ; 
Another plunges down a frightful chasm. 
But ah ! most sad of all, some hear their conscience 
Upbraiding for the crimes they have committed. 

211 



HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 



Unconquerable Titan ! chalnless Sea! 
Thou wild expanse of waters, bluer far 
Than heaven that stoops to meet thy seeming 

verge, — 
Embodiment of grandeur, — beauteous world 
Of warring waves, too great for thought to grasp 
Thy dread infinitude, — O Sea ! at length. 
Once more, I cast me at thy feet, and feel 
My heart to throb in concord with thy dark 
Deep-sounding billows. Thou dost dash thy surf, 
Wave after wave, upon the craggy beach, 
Whose foam seethes hissing over shell and sand, 
As if to greet me : — thy hoarse-murmuring voice 
Hath bid me welcome ! O, how oft, amid 
The inland hills and valleys of the West, 
Have I, like some fond lover, dream'd of thee, — 
In fancy, stretch'd me e'en as now I lie 



HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 



213 



Upon thy chafed and weed-strown sands to gaze 
Upon thy darkhng waters, and have drifted 
At thy wild will, I knew not, cared not where, 
Happy while seeming pillow'd on thy breast. — 

Immutable Ocean ! of all things of earth, 

Thou art most constant. Man doth feel the thrills 

Of love, delight, and hope ; but they depart 

Or perish : he is worn and crush'd beneath 

Sorrow and care and toil and misery ; 

But they are loth to leave him, and he dies. 

Nations arise to fall ; the wilderness 

Blossoms a garden, and doth change again 

To wood or desert ; e'en the very Earth 

Varies her aspect ; mountain-tops fall prone 

Before the earthquake, valleys rise aloft 

Again to sink, and rivers fade away 

Thou, thou, alone, dost change not. Though thou 

smil'st 
And frown'st and smil'st again, 'tis wantonness 
In mockery of th' inexorable doom 
Of all save thee. 

19 



214 HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 

Relentless, fell Destroyer, 
Yet Guardian of lu)w many a myriad lives — 
A universe thou art within thyself! 
Thine offspring are innumerable ; the stars, 
That on thy hyaline vastness nightly gaze. 
Are not their equal. — E'en thy very sands 
Are fill'd with countless beings, and thy depth 
Is the unbounded habitation, realm, 
Of monster-forms, from the leviathan, 
More huge than aught that treads upon the earth. 
To the insensate polyp. This fair shell, 
That dwelt amid thine uproar, rudely thrown 
From thy deep-throbbing bosom to my feet, 
Is the diminutive mansion of a life. 
And thou hast, 'neath thy waters, oozy leas. 
Paved with bright silver sands and milky pearls 
And rainbow-tinted shells and gems that gleam 
With tremulous radiance in thy shadowy depths, — 
Caves dark as Erebus, the dread abode 
Of solitude and thine eternal waves, — 
Huge towering Alps, whose wildly-clifted sides, 
Hoary with shaggy moss, hang terrible 



HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 215 

Amid thy waters, — quiet dells o'ergrown 
With waving sea-blooms, fairy spots of strange 
Fantastic loveliness, — and coral-groves, 
Branching with shapeless foliage, old as thou : 
And o'er thy waters many a wilderness 
Of tangled seaweed drifts in calm and storm. 

Thine azure waves roll on continuously ; 

They dance at pleasure round how many a shore — 

True nymphs of freedom, curbless as the wind. 

Their children are the clouds that people heaven ; 

They wanton with them, mocking all their smiles 

And frowns alternate in thy glassy depth : 

The rainbow is their daughter, beauteous spirit 

Smiling 'mid storms, begotten of the sun. 

Thy billows, through the watches of the night. 

Mirror the sky's cerulean pave, and read 

Its starry pages sinking to the west, — 

The Magi of the ocean. When the moon, 

Beautiful sorceress, doth smile beyond 

Thine either verge, thy waters heave and swell 

In tremulous splendor, save when some far wave 



2i6 HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 

With Opaline undulation, for an instant, 
Seems to o'erwhelm her, — follow'd, startlingly, 
By an intenser spell of her enchantment. 

Most puissant Element ! whose lacy foam 

Cradled the Goddess of all-conquering Love, 

It is not strange thine is the wondrous realm 

Imagination fiU'd with sinewous gods, 

And fair Dorissan beings, whose nude forms, 

Ineffable in loveliness, did rival 

Their heavenly sisters. Musing on thy bright 

Alhambran grottoes, gleaming shell-strown ways, 

And Vallombrosan dales festoon'd with moss, 

Thou seem'st the dwelling-place of deities, — 

A world where blessed souls might choose abide, 

Leaving Elysium. Ah ! methinks I see 

Sweet slumbering Nereids, couch'd in glimmering 

caves. 
Their scallop-shells unstrung and by them laid; 
While, o'er their bosoms, azure-tinted locks, 
Begemm'd with sapphire, pearl, and amethyst. 
Ripple upon the water. — Fancy, now. 



HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 



217 



Pictures thy monarch hoar, careering on 
Over thy prairies vast, his chariot-wheels 
HurHng a sheen of sprayey gems ! while, hark, 
Old Triton winds his charmed horn to soothe 
Thy troublous deep. 

Thyself, resistless Power ! 
In thy sublime vicissitudes, in thine 
Omnipotence, and ever-during youth. 
And might, and beauty, seem'st a god. Thou 

reck'st 
Not for the mightiest of this wide, wide world. 
With thy tempestuous voice thou laugh'st to scorn 
The puny mandates even of a Xerxes ; 
His pennon'd navies, boasting of their might. 
Planning the blood-bought conquest of an empire. 
Thou playfully dost shatter — dash to naught, 
Nor deign'st thou give account to earthly power. 
Thy days are as thy bleach'd unnumbered sands, 
And yet thou art not older, — still the same 
In glory and in grandeur; time, to thee, 
Is but the chronicler of thine eternity. 
19- 



2i8 HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 

^ons on aeons, in the unmeasured past, 

When there was not a man to write, thou kept'st 

The annals of the childhood of the world. 

Nature's most lowly children thou didst mark 

To grow and multiply, through centuries, 

And change, till many vanish'd from the earth ; 

Yet in thy rocky tablets thou inscrib'dst 

Their various history. Strange, unwieldy shapes, 

That now have not their counterpart on earth, 

Paddled upon thy waters, and became, 

In ages, parents of new progeny ; 

Yet thou preserv'dst their memory, and didst trace 

Their curious lineage, O thou hoariest Sage! 

Save Time. Nor wert thou idle then ; thou rear'dst, 

Through those dim awful vacuums, rocks on rocks. 

Foundations of new worlds where yet should teem 

Strange beings, flowers, and verdure. Thou didst 

take 
The earth, e'en as a giant, in thine arms — 
Moulding her form and destiny. O when 
The mind doth seek to grasp such mighty 

thoughts — 



219 



HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 

Such magnitude, 'tis palsied, falling spent, 
E'en as the little land-bird falls and dies 
'Midst thy unbounded vastness. Aged Sea! 
A being of an hour, I muse upon 
Thy past and future, lost in thee and Nature- 



When thou dost writhe convulsed, almighty Being! 

In agony of passion, and the heavens 

Darken above thee ; — when thy boundless plains 

Are plow'd by tempests, rolling up thy waves 

To mountain-billows, and the sea-flowers quake 

With terror and are shatter'd in thy depths ; — 

When the quick lightning, demon of the storm. 

Leaps zigzag, making palpable the gloom 

And desolation, follow'd by the roll 

Of thunders deepening, 'midst contending voices 

Of winds and waves ! — when the tried mariner 

Grows pale with fear and trembles at the helm ; — 

O, then, how terribly beautiful, sublime 

Thou art, O Uncontrollable !— Yet lull'd, 

As now thou slumber'st conscious of thy strength, 

Thou art how lovely, grand, bright summer Sea! 



220 HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 

While gently heave thy billows, bounding on 
With ever-changing, calm magnificence, 
Beneath the dancing sunlight. 

I would dwell, 

murmuring Ocean! ever dwell with thee, 
And be thy low companion. I would rove 
Thy stern precipitous cliffs, and yesty beach, 
And by thy rocky coves, and lonely bays, 

To gather shells which thou wouldst bring to me. 

1 would forget the world, forget myself, 

And care and pride, and, here alone with thee, 

Be almost happy. — I do love to study 

Thy changing moods ; when placid, dream with 

thee, — 
When madding, feel my heart swell like thy waves 
Tempestuously. Ah, yes, 'tis sweet to mark 
The osprey circle heavenward and swoop down 
To snatch his finny prey, — to feel thy breath 
Fanning my cheek, — to watch, at morn and even. 
The level sunshine cast its magic woof 
Of mingled Tyrian, golden, roseate dyes 
O'er thy upheaving surface. 'Tis delight 



HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 221 

To gaze full oft upon thy breaker-bars' 

White caps of feathery foam, — to hear thy roar 

And mmgle with thy tumult ! for thy voice, 

Replete with harmony, invokes to life 

Th' enthusiasm of childhood, and thou speak'st 

A wordless language touching mystic things. 

I would cast off this being to become 
An atom of thy grand immensity, — 
To catch the ardor of thy freedom, — feel 
Thy soul to stir within me ! O to be 
The spume upon thy ever-rolling surf, — 
A weed to toss upon thee aimlessly, — 
A wave to feel thy impetus and throb 
With thy pulsations, rocking far from shore. 
The lonely petrel nursling of the deep. — 
Oh that I were the viewless, fitful gale. 
Rising in tempests — spirit, wild and free, 
Thy seemly playmate, ever dancing on 
Over thy shimmering wilderness of waves ! 
Take me upon thy breast, impetuous Sea — 
Bear me afar to some balm-breathing isle 



222 HYMN TO THE OCEAN. 

Lapp'd in thy murmur, O symphonious One, 
Only with thee to dwell, for aye, and muse 
Upon thy music, beauty, glory, grandeur — 
Only with thee, dark Ocean ! sounding Sea. 



SUMMER DAYS. 



How sweet it is, when summer days 

Pass stilly like delicious dreams, 
To traverse unfrequented ways 

Where murmur cooling sylvan streams, 
And faintly catch the mellow sound 

Of voices far, in dreamy mood, 
And fancy in some shade profound 

The genii of the solitude 
Are holding, as the Indians tell, 
Their war-dance in some haunted dell : 

And, when sweet fragrance fills the air 
From many a milky elder-bloom, 

To lie far from the sunny glare 

Beneath some beech-wood's pleasant gloom, 

223 



224 SUMMER DAYS. 



Or, loitering on for hours and hours 
Where o'er the treetops squirrels run, 

To gather scattering forest flowers 
In valleys pied with shade and sun, 

While echoing softly round is heard 

The song of thrush and mocking-bird. 



HYMN 

TO THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE. 



When Sorrow drapes me in her pall, 
And dread Despair broods over all ; 
When Pleasure thrills with warm delight, 
And Beauty charms, Astarte-bright ; 
Yea, in all time — in Winter bare, 
When Summer's tresses scent the air; — 

Thou ! whate'er thy name may be. 
Father of all, I bow to Thee ! 

However sad my low estate, 

1 ask not oft a happier fate. 

One life — what is it when 'tis o'er ? 
An atom Time has dash'd ashore ! 

20 225 



226 HYMN TO THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE. 

Its toil may be another's rest; 
Its woe be haply for the best. 
Weak, weary, though I cannot see — 
Ruler of all, I bow to Thee ! 

O Thou ! who, soul-like, dost pervade 
The universe, unbounded made. 
In whose mysterious laws we see 
The majesty of divinity, — 
O Thou ! unseen, not understood, 
Inscrutable — yet all wise and good, — 
In every fate, whate'er it be. 
Soul of all Life ! I bow to Thee ! 



THE AZTEC MAIDEN. 

A SCENE BY THE LAKE NEAR THE ANCIENT 
CITY OF TENOCHTITLAN. 



Watching many an island, slowly 

Floating 'neath th' o'ershadowing mountains 
O'er the lake, where, drooping lowly, 

Tropic ferns kiss'd murmuring fountains, 
'Neath the trees, a shadowy bower. 

Sat a lovely Aztec Maiden, 
While the air, from many a flower, 

With delicious fragrance laden. 
Waved her long and raven tresses 
Like a lover's fond caresses. 
Sitting where the mossy ledges 

Ever dripp'd, she watch'd the sedges 

227 



228 1^^^ AZTEC MAIDEN. 

Rise and fall above the swallow, 
Bathing in its pearly hollow, 
While her fingers idly braided 
Garlands sweet of flowers unfaded. 

Ah ! she seem'd a Dryad dreaming. 

While the west-wind, fain to fold her, 
Kiss'd her through her tresses streaming 

Over bosom, brow, and shoulder; 
And how lovely ! for the fever 

In her young blood, warmly gushing, 
Dancing on, did always leave her 

Fair as northern maidens bhtshing^ — 
Yea, like fruits where skies are sunny, 

Ripen'd deep, whose juices bloody 
Through the rind (like Hybla's honey) 

Look so tempting, rich and ruddy ! 
Loop'd with buds, her mantle flowing 
Hid her knees ; all round and glowing 
Lay her limbs almost revealing 
Charms, that moss and flowers, concealing, 



THE AZTEC MAIDEN. 229 

Seem'd as conscious 'twas a blessing 
To droop over — touch — caressing. 

Thus she sat a wreath entwining 
On her arm at ease rechning, 
When, perchance, remember'd pleasure 
(Sweet is memory's hoarded treasure) 
Made her olive features fairer — 
Blushing made their beauty rarer, — 
Like a summer sea by moonlight, 
Like a mountain's snow at noonlight, 
Or the rainbow's tinted shading, 
Brightly coming, softly fading; — 
For she thought of Maspaola, 
Of the chieftain Maspaola. 
Though the airs of female-college 
Ne'er had added to her knowledge. 
Love, that oldest, sweetest story. 
Had its chosen knight of glory, — 
And by whose emotion, moving 
All her heart, how truly proving 



230 



THE AZTEC MAIDEN. 

That, though southern suns had kiss'd her, 
All must own her as a sister. 

Scattering flowers, she rises stately 

Changed in mien and form and feature — 
Scarce the same, that seem'd so lately 
Nature's calmest, gentlest, creature. 
Ah, her eye empassion'd flashes 
'Neath low-drooping ebon lashes ; 
And she, listening, stands, unknowing 
That the meddling zephyrs blowing 
Loose the glittering band, confining 
Her rich robe, with gold lace shining ; 
That her mantle's blown asunder 
From her sun-brown'd bosom under, 
Heaving with some strange emotion 
Like the pulse of summer's ocean. 

Tell me why, O high-born Lady ! 
Dost thou, 'neath yon labyrinth shady 
Of acacia, watching, linger, 
Parting wide with jewell'd finger 



THE AZTEC MAIDEN, 

Each intruding twig, corolla ? 
'Tis for him — for Maspaola ! 
List ! he comes — his arms, his kisses 
Seal thy dream's imagined blisses ! 

To yon arbor, which the fragrant 
Blossoms thickly-mantling cover 

(Home of many a crimson vagrant 
Humming-bird), she leads her lover.- 

Enter not ! ye secret-telling, 

For 'tis Love's sequester'd dwelling. 

O'er the lake below the City, 

Timely with the oars' soft splashing, 

Now is heard some boatman's ditty 
Mingling with their distant dashing; 

And the sun, as if regretting 

SJie has vanish'd, now is setting. 



231 



A DREAM. 



KQL TO ovap Tit] [lEv fKpivev uyadov , or, evL novoig uv 

KoX Kivdvvotg, (jxog uiya f/c Aibg I6dv f.Su^e 

Xenoph. Anab., B, III. c. I. 

I. 

At midnight's silent hour I dream'd. 
I saw a land with sky o'ercast, 
A region aged, dreary, vast, 
Where beings lived, or life it seem'd; 
Where scarce the orb, that overpass'd 
The heavenly way, distinctly beam'd 
For faithless mists which ever teem'd, 
And light perverted life at last — 
So faintly to the mind it gleam'd. 

Distress upraised her piteous voice, 
And, as the echo on mine ear, 
232 



A DREAM. 

I heard a seeming fiend rejoice, 

Chilling my startled soul to hear ! 

I saw a mother sadly weep 

Above a tomb but newly made, 

And mark'd a maid's pleased fancy keep 

Sweet time with flowers her hands essay'd 

To twine into a bridal wreath, 

But, lo ! e'en while she wove the braid. 

The flowers were growing sear beneath. 

I cast mine eyes where life decay'd, 

Saw anxious watchers bending low 

O'er one whose breath was thick and slow, 

Beheld emotions ebb and flow, 

Warm thrills of hope both come and go. 

And pallid cheeks o'erflush, and fade — 

And turn to hide their voiceless woe ! 

I heard a joyous peal of laughter 
That seem'd as from a purer sphere, 
And voices softly sweet to hear ; 
But, ah, the gloom was darker after — 
There, even joy begot a fear. 



233 



234 ' ^ DREAM. 



There were among the medley throng — ■ 
Like scattering stars 'tween clouds at night- 
Some hearts that beat a silver song, 
That winnow'd graces left and right 
Around the path they pass'd along, 
Leaving behind a radiant light. 
Ah me, they were like flowers that bloom 
Ere spring in gala-garb is dress'd — 
They lived to cheer surrounding gloom : 
They lived and died but for the rest. 
And, yet, methought that little band, 
Within that cloud-enshrouded land, 
Was, over all, supremely bless'd. 

II. 

The dream was changed. — I felt a hand 
Of mystic softness seal mine eyes. 
And heard a gentle, low command. 
As from some viewless distant land : 
" Lo, mortal ! follow me — arise." 
I floated on, yet knew not where, 
Gently as fleecy clouds that flee 



A DREAM. 235 

Upon the drowsy July air; 
I sail'd across a charmed sea. 

Soon through the midnight of the way, 

An orient vesture met the eye, 

Whose ample folds o'erhung the sky 

And dazzled like the orb of day. 

And suddenly 'twas rent in twain — 

The dizzy ken could not behold ; 

Methought I heard a grand, deep strain 

That rapturous grew as on it roU'd, 

And, dying, sweeter grew again. 

At length return'd the power of sight ; 
I breathless view'd full many a plain 
Whose air seem'd mingling rays of light, 
And velvet vale, and verdant lane. 
And wood that waved in cool delight, 
And, far, a tortuous azure chain 
Of mountains of majestic height. 

The odorous zephyrs wafted thence, 
From nameless, sweet, innumerous flowers, 



236 A DREAM. 

Intoxication to the sense 

As never blooms in earthly bowers. 

Slowly I drifted nearer, nearer, 

'Neath softer light than solar beams. 

And heard wild songsters warbling clearer 

'Midst laughter of cool mountain streams. 

Delicious grapes o'er dale and hill 
Hung ripe in bloomy, purple pride. 
And golden fruits, on every side. 
Allured the ever-tempted will 
With fragrance soft that never died. 
Bright peaceful dwellings gleam'd around 
'Neath many a vine-clad vocal wood ; 
And from the flower-enamell'd ground 
Uprose a joy-inspiring sound — 
The voices of the Wise and Good ; 
And Beings, in whose beauteous faces 
But Love had left ecstatic traces 
In smiles that beam'd eternal there. 
Were busy with each pleasing care 



A DREAM. 237 



That makes existence happiness — 
Were conning deep, deh'ghtful lore, 
To whose high mysteries, doom'd to bless, 
Earth's mightiest sages cannot soar. 

It was a scene of perfect bliss, 
A land intense, ethereal, pure. 
Where passion ne'er alloy'd a kiss. 
Where pleasure ne'er was death's allure. 
I heard a voice of soft address. 
And saw a smile of vanish'd years ; 
Received a loved-one's sweet caress — 
Awoke, alas ! awoke in tears. 



WRITTEN ON THE HUDSON. 



Most lovely Stream ! 'tis sweet to flee 
From yonder Babylon by the sea, 
And, 'mid thy vales and mountains, be 

Awhile at rest, 
And, like the wavelets glancing free. 

Float o'er thy breast. 

Who can forget when first the eye 
Beholds the Catskills, 'gainst the sky, 
More beauteous than if they were nigh, 

Far westward stand, 
A wall of soft cerulean dye — 

A fairyland ? 

Yes, River of the Mountains ! save 

The woods wide-spreading o'er thy wave, 

238 



WRITTEN ON THE HUDSON. 

Thy waters, still clear-flowing, lave 

The same sweet scene, 
As when the Half-Moon plow'd thy pave 

Of tremulous sheen. 

But, now, no Indian's bark canoe 
Darts swiftly in and out of view — 
Quick as a midnight meteor — through 

Depending vines, 
As then to hail old Hudson's crew 

With friendly signs. 

Now e'en the Dutch, that dwelt of yore 
Upon thy fair, romantic shore. 
Live only in thy legend -lore 

And ballad rhyme ; 
O'er great and small thus triumphs hoar 

Relentless Time. 

Methinks, within a bark that sails 
Howe'er the current's force prevails — 
Like mine that drifts with summer's gales. 



239 



240 WRITTEN ON THE HUDSON. 



I can full well 
See Irving dreaming those old tales 
He loved to tell. 

But he is dead : — as drowsy seems 
Quaint Sleepy Hollow, lapp'd in dreams, 
And with its wonted beauty teems, 

Though gently wave 
The grass and flowers, 'neath summer beams, 

Upon his grave. 

And Drake and Halleck — they who sung, 
Fair Stream, thy lovely scenes among, 
Have pass'd away; — one died when young. 

One linger'd late 
To sing (his lyre with cypress hung) 

The other's fate. 

But, River ! thou dost roll as clear 
Whate'er be man's short sad career ; 
Though Arnold, crush'd by guilt and fear, 
A traitor's name, 



WRITTEN ON THE HUDSON. 

Shoved off for life from yonder pier, — 
Thou art the same. 

Thus, e'en though myriad ills hav^e won 
Dominion o'er earth's gifted son, 
Th' eternal springs of Nature run 

Full evermore; 
'Tis sad — 'tis strange, — a mystery none 

May here explore. 

The Highlands cast a deeper eve; 
Ha ! mark old Crownest's brow receive 
A crown, the setting sunbeams weave* 

Of golden light, 
Ere o'er the darkening earth they leave 
. The gloom of night. 

June, 1S76. 



21 



241 



THE ANGEL OF SONG. 



A Spirit daily comes to me 

With whisper'd songs of heavenly sweetness ; 
Her home is far beyond a sea 

Where bliss abides in true completeness. 

I know not why my Angel-Love 

Delights thus oft to hover round me, 

Nor why, from amaranth-vales above, 

To this dark world she came and found me. 

At night, when sad I sink to rest, 

With words enwoven in Lydian measure 

She twines her arms about my breast — 
Singing me songs of 'wildering pleasure ; 
242 



THE ANGEL OF SONG. 243 

And when the morn with queenly grace 
Smiles radiant o'er heaven's azure ocean, 

Full oft I feel her light embrace 

And sweet breath breathing warm emotion, 

And hear her song, so lulling low, 

And soft-toned lute with cadence holy ; 

Oh, then hot tears would rise and flow 
That she's of heaven — I earthly, lowly ! 

At summer eve, when lone I stray 
Afar where Nature slumbers stilly. 

While Dian floods a mimic day 
O'er sedgy lake and drowsy lily ; 

And, when, through watches of the night, 
Dreaming o'er many a glowing ember, 

I list the snow-god's hoarse delight 

Weaving the shroud of pale December; — 

I hear her robe's soft rustle near; 

Enchantment lends me mystic vision ; 



244 



THE ANGEL OF SONG. 



Strange music falls upon my ear 

That spirits hymn in bowers Elysian. 

And though she culls immortal flowers 

In her far-distant happy Thule, 
And with their sweets, for hours and hours, 

Dispels my gloom and loves me truly ; 

I feel the dank of sordid dust, 

Nor may I wear a wreath of gladness ; 

Thus, aye, I mar seraphic trust. 

And for her smile repay her sadness. 

But still she comes with sandal'd feet 
And golden locks ambrosia-laden ; 

And still my heart forgets to beat — 
Loving that more than mortal maiden ! 

I oft essay to string the shell 

And breathe her lowliest songs to others ; 
But, ah ! she sings like Israfil 

Unpeer'd for sweetness 'mong his brothers 



THE ANGEL OF SONG. 245 



'Tis ever vain, — I fail and weep ; 

Earth triumphs over high endeavor. 
'Tis my mysterious doom to keep 

A h'ght from heaven — reveal it never. 



NIGHT. 



Calm Night ! thy pall-like vesture falls 
In solemn grandeur o'er the world. 
Beneath thy sombrous shrouds unfurl'd, 
Thy dim and awful majesty appalls ; 

For, o'er all Nature, broods sublime 
A sense as of o'ershadowing doom — 

A semblance of the end, the death of time, 
Decaying worlds, quick-fading suns, and nether 
gloom. 

Let those who cannot rapture feel 

Ne'er stray with me at midnight-hour : 

Awake them not — their souls no rays reveal 

Of those deep-kindling fires that steal 

Upon my heart, e'en as I kneel 

To some impending, nameless Power ! 
246 



NIGHT. 



247 



Night! on thy muffled car swift-driven, 
Thou art sublime past mid-day's blazing sun. 
If moon-lit, calm, — if lightning-riven. 

When blackening tempests wildly rave on 
high,— 
If stars emboss the vault of heaven 

(Thy glittering crown across the sky), — 
Thou art, O darksome Queen ! in grandeur ever 
one. 



SONGS AND BALLADS. 



22 



249 



THISTLE-SEEDS. 



A HAPPY child at play, 
I blew the thistle's downy seeds, 

And watch'd them lightly float away 
Amid the blue autumnal sky, — 

How dear are childish deeds ! — 
Laugh'd to see them sailing high, 
My winged fairy steeds. 

But, now, all sear and dry, 
The early flowers of Hope are dead ; 

And, while they lowly trampled lie 
By stern Misfortune, ruthless Care, 

I take them up instead. 
And cast them on the wintry air, 

And sigh — that they are fled ! 

251 



LITTLE NELL, THE PRIDE OF 
THE SCHOOL. 

A BALLAD. 



One January eve, o'er the prairie deserted, 
Little Nell started homeward from school ; 

With a belt of black clouds the horizon was skirted, 
And the winds sadly moan'd like a ghoul. 

As graceful was she as the fawn's every motion ; 

The pride of the school was sweet Nell. 
The scholars remember her still with devotion, — 

" She was best in her classes," they tell. 

Her innocent laugh it was clear as the gushing 

Of hurrying silvery streams, 
And softer the glow of her cheek than the blushing 

Of the sky in the summer-eve's beams. 
252 



LITTLE NELL.. 253 

That evening, like waves of a swift, turbid river, 
Soon the clouds fill'd the heavens amain ; 

Through the crisp wither'd grass, oft a terror-like 
shiver 
Pass'd fitfully over the plain. 

And suddenly snow-flakes — a torrent descending — 
Dash'd round with the blast in its wrath ; 

Continuously falling and whirling and blending, 
How quickly they cover'd the path ! 

Alas, how the tempest relentlessly pelted ! — 

Little Nell hurried on in despair. 
The snow on her cheeks in big teardrops had 
melted. 

And it hung in the gold of her hair. 

Bewilder'd she pray'd for the mercy of Heaven — 
She knew not the way she should go ; 

But the pitiless flakes were unceasingly driven : 
" Oh God ! I am lost in the snow !" 
2^* 



254 



LITTLE NELL. 



In the darkness, wherever the piercing winds drove 
her, 

She struggled along through the storm ; 
The terrible anguish of freezing was over, 

For numbness had deaden'd her form. 

She, staggering, mutter'd, — " Ah me, I am weary." 
In a snow-drift she lay down to rest. 

She forgot that the prairie was stormy and dreary ; 
She felt not the snow on her breast. 

She was home in the cottage ; — without was the 
sighing 

Of winds ; — she was warm in her bed. 
Alas! 'twas a dream, — the delirium of dying: 

The winds sung a dirge for the dead ! 

Her parents they sought her afar on the prairie 
Through the snow-storm confusing and blurr'd ; 

" Nell !" " Nell!" — ah, how often they shouted; 
but ne'er a 
Reply to their calling they heard. 



LITTLE NELL. 255 

Till the night and the tempest together de- 
parted, 
They waited in dreadful suspense, 
Hoping fondly, perchance little Nell had not 
started 
When the clouds roll'd so threatening and 
dense. 

But at morning they found her asleep, as if 
dreaming. 
Where fatigued she had sunk in the night; 
Her long yellow curls they were fluttering and 
gleaming 
O'er her brow, ah ! how lifeless and white ! 

And, weeping, they made her a bed on the 
morrow 
'Neath the snow which would melt and 
depart ; 
But the weight of the father's and mother's deep 
sorrow — 
Would tJiat ever melt from the heart ? 



256 



LITTLE NELL. 



Nevermore did her playmates lead Nell to the 
wildwood, 
When in June it is shadowy and cool, 
To weave a sweet wreath, in the rapture of child- 
hood, 
And crown her the Pride of the School. 



ON THE RECOVERY 

OF A PROUD YET BEAUTIFUL YOUNG LADY 



Sometimes, O Death, thy stony heart 
Is soften'd ere thy dart be driven, 

And, for a space, thou dost depart 
To single one more Jit for heaven. 

And, thus, to-day — as those forbear 

Who mow the vale where lilies grow — 

'Mong weeds, there grew a blossom fair; 
Thy hands forbore to lay it low ! — 

The daintiest lily in the dell; 

A queenly bud without a peer. 
Ah, Death ! thy scythe in pity fell, 

For one so //v//^/ should linger here. 

257 



"I THINK AYE OF THEE." 

PARAPHRASED FROM THE GERMAN OF FRIED- 
RICH MATTHISSON. 



I THINK aye of tliee 
When the woods, with the glee 
Of the nightingales' singing, 
Are melodiously ringing. 
When think'st thou of me? 

I ponder on thee, 
As the glimmerings I see 
Of the daylight half-faded, 
By the fountain o'ershaded. 
Where think'st thou of me ? 
258 



" / THINK A YE OF TIJEEr 

I am dreaming of thee 
With sweet anguish, — a sea 
Of vague longings appaHing;- 
Hot tear-drops are falling ! — 
Dost thou thus think of me ? 

think thou of me 
Till our meeting shall be 
In a world not to sever ! 
Far-distant however, 

1 dream but of tJice ! 



259 



A PICTURE. 



I. 

THE LADY'S LAMENT. 

My silks are the fairest 

At revel and ball, 
My gems are the rarest — 

Outflashing them all ; 
And, yet, though in seeming 

With happiness bless'd, 
I'm longing and dreaming — 

Ah ! never at rest. 

Full many are kneeling 
Imploring my hand, 

Their true love revealing — 
For riches and land ! 
260 



A PICTURE. 261 

'Twcrc better thoiic;li lowly, 

Yea, poverty sweet, 
If life were not ivlioUy 

A hollow deceit. 

My choice never should be 

Of diamond and pearl ; 
Ah, me ! that I could be 

A cottager's girl. — 
With purity's blessing, 

How happy to be 
One's love, whose caressing 

Were truly for me ! 



II. 



THE GIPSY'S LAMENT. 

Unknown though at meeting, 
Though loveless to me. 

My heart's ever beating, 
Fair Lady, for thee ; 
23 



262 ^ PICTURE. 

Yet, silent and lonely, 
I scarcely betray 

While loving thee only 
Hope's bitter decay. 

In birthright above me 

A Lady thou art ; 
Thou never couldst love me 

Though gentle of heart ! 
Perchance thou deplorest 

A sorrow like mine, — 
The one thou adorest 

May never be thine. 

Thus fate doth bereave us 

Of that which is dear, 
And pleasure deceive us 

And be but a tear. 
Ah ! Lady of beauty, 

Unloving to me, 
My heart is in duty 

A vassal to thee ! 



A PICTURE. 263 



III. 



CONCLUSION. 



It seems there is given 

With each cup of life 
A spell that has driven 

Our reason to strife ; 
We heed not the measure 

Of weal we possess, 
But seek some new pleasure 

We fancy would bless. 

Thus life is forever 

A battle in vain, — 
To ahva>'s endeavor, 

Yet never attain : 
We waywardly borrow, 

Or lofty or low, 
Some balm for our sorrow 

We never shall know ! 



264 



A PICTURE. 

Alas ! as we ponder, 

Whate'er be our share, 
We sorrowing wander 

A valley of care ; 
For we know happiest hours 

Are heralds of pain. 
And pleasure's sweet flowers 

Soon wither again. 



HOPE. 



An, Hope! thou bright deUisive fire 
Thou sun of our immortal part, 

'Tis dreadful when thy beams expire 
Leaving the midnight of the heart. 

But thou to man art aye so dear, 

Me seldom deems thee all untrue;— 

Through disappointment's bitter tear 
He welcomes back thy light anew ! 

And, thus, I never quite receive 
Conviction thou art false to me, 

And fondly, vainly still believe— 
Turning:, sweet siren, back to thee. 

23* 265 



'£>! 



THE EVENING PAPER; 

AN INCIDENT OF THE LATE REBELLION. 



For the evening paper waiting 

Eustaleen stood at the gate, 
Leaning 'gainst the wicker grating, 

For the carrier linger'd late. 

Though 'twas May — the time of gladness- 

In her face so paly fair 
Was a shade of pensive sadness, 

That a year had brooded there ; 

For her lover died, while leading, 
By a Southern foeman's hand. 

On the Rappahannock, — bleeding 
To preserve his native Land. 

266 



THE EVENING PAPER. 

When commanded to retire 

(Mis remaining comrades said), 

They beheld liim fall — expire; 
Thus she knew that he was dead. 

And it was for him, who perish'd 
Nobly warring with the foe, 

That sweet Eustaleen still cherish'd 
Love and long-enduring woe. 

She, for sake of him departed. 
Read at eve the paper still — 

How the soldiers, gallant-hearted, 
Conquer'd with as brave a will, — 

Weeping for the wives and mothers 
And for Jicr that loves as zvcU, 

When she read the list of others 
Who in each fierce battle fell. 

While the robins, newly-mated. 
Sung of love's delicious strength, 

Sorrowing luistaleen awaited 

For the post — which came at length. 



267 



268 ^-^^ EVENING PAPER. 

'Twas the carrier's voice when speaking 
Made her look up in his face; — 

Ere a breath, she, faintly shrieking, 
Swoon'd within her love's embrace ! 

Yes ! her lover — as arisen 

From the tomb to earth above — 

From the dreadful Libby prison 
Had escaped to life and love ! 

Often through the summer weather, 
Then, those wedded lovers read 

Of the brave, and wept together 
For the prisoners and the dead. 



SONG. 



Cease to ring, O distant bell — 
Lovely sound across the lea, 
Barely heard o'er hill and dell, — 

Hush, sweet spirit ! flee; 
There's a voice that breathes a spell 

Sweeter far to me. 

Beauty — who but feels thy power, 

I leaven's own essence ever}'where ? 
Stellar sphere and scented flower, 

Earth and cloud and air, 
All possess thy glorious dower; 
Yet there's one most fair. 

269 



2/0 



SONG. 

Sleep, O mere ! O gleamy lake, 

With thy moon-lit, silver hue ; 
Summer wind, O cease to break 
Ripples bright and new ; — 
There are eloquent eyes that take 
All my love from you ! 



MAID OF THE MOHAWK. 



Fair Maid ! like this meandering river, 

Thou dost the witching spell possess 
To which the heart is vassal ever — 

The charm of rustic loveliness ; 
And like this river, clear and purling, 

Thy heart is pure, unknown to guile ; 
P'roni 'neath thine auburn tresses curling, 

Methinks thou couldst but only smile ! 

II. 

I've seen full many a pastoral valley, 
But none like this delightful scene 

With emerald dell, and forest alley 

Whose boughs the sunbeams dance between ; 

271 



2/2 



MAID OF THE MOHAWK. 



Yet, thou, with lea and wood agreeing, 
Though fairer than Arcadian dale. 

Dost seem their Nymph, in beauty being 
Well suited to so sweet a vale. 



III. 

The world to me is often dreary 

Where hearts become so hard and cold, 
Till, sick of show, I grow how weary 

Of those who bow them down to gold, 
And almost hate the sullen bustle 

Of men who care for naught beside, 
And turn me from the silken rustle 

Of Beauty pale, in pamper'd pride ; 



IV. 

But, Maiden, thou canst not dissemble — 
Unskill'd in falsehood's worldly ways ; 

Ah, how thine eyes' long lashes tremble 
And droop at but a word of praise ! 



MAID OF THE MOHAWK. 

Ah me, if all tlic earth were only- 
Composed of spirits such as thou, 

'Twould be a heaven — and never lonely, 
And sad, and dark, and drear, as now ! 



V. 

I love the voice that hails the flowers 

Of bosky shade and sunny glade, 
That learns their names in leisure hours 

And makes them friends before they fade, 
That carols oft, 'mid breath oi clover. 

Sweet ballads in the fields afar. 
When twilight glimmers, toil is over, 

And golden is the evening star. 



VI. 

I love the mind that sees the glory 
In Nature's face, which ne'er expires, 

That loves the forest, gnarl'd and hoary. 
Whose leaves are wild ijcolian l)Tes, — 
24 



-/i 



274 MAID OF THE MOHAWK. 



The soul that scorns the paltry pleasure 
Of those who kneel at Fashion's shrine, 

Yet quaffs the drainless, mantling measure 
Of all creation's nectarous wine. 



VII. 

I love the hand whose taper fingers 

Are stain'd with strawberries growing wild, 
And graceful foot whose small print lingers 

Impress'd amidst the violets mild, 
And peachy cheek where health's reflected. 

By summer suns kiss'd darkly fair. 
And hair thrown back as if neglected 

In ringlets on the caressing air. 

VIII. 

And such art thou, O Mohawk Maiden ! 

Wild floweret of this sweet retreat. — 
'Tis sad the loveliest blossoms fade in 

The sun's unclouded light and heat; 



MAID OF THE MOHAWK. 

Thy soft dark eyes, that smile in duty, 
Thy nut-brown checks, tliy tresses curl'd, 

Tliy vermeil lips, would lose their beauty 
Amidst the heartless busy world. 



IX. 

Below yon hills so c^ently swellinc^, 

The murmuring Mohawk at my feet, 
To lodge in some sequester'd dwelling 

In thy calm vale were truly sweet; 
Ah, yes, my heart could dwell forever 

Most happy here with bliss and thee, 
Remembering care and sorrow never; — 

Thy soul would mirror heaven to me. 



X. 

But, no. — I\Ty thoughts full oft are lowly, 
Nor could exalt me to the peer 

Of one, like thee, so chaste and holy; 
I'll on — and leave thee joyous here ! 



275 



2^6 MAID OF THE MOHAWK. 

And, yet, sweet Maid, I'll ne'er forget thee, 
Nor this lone spot of peace and rest ; 

Thine innocence, here where I met thee, 
Shall keep thee happy, make thee bless'd ! 

Herkimer Co., New York, June, 1876. 



AH, NOW THK SONG IS 1-LOWX. 



Ah, now the song is flown, 

And bliss and day have fled, 
For I am here alone ; — 
Her presence fill'd the night 
With more than heavenly light, 
]5ut now the day is dead. 

II. 

I strove to prove my heart 

It never could be so; 
For something seems to start 
So vaguely back on me, — 
Prophetic, it ma\' be, 

Of tears and future woe. 

24* 277 



SIR TRISTRAM'S SONG TO QUEEN 
ISOUDE. 



When the dim daylight is fading, 

Homeward is hieing the bee 
While the spiced meadowland's lading 

Balm on the air of the lea, 
Beneath dark mountains o'ershading 

Grander at dusk seem to be ; 
Isoude ! 'tis blissful, my fair, 

Sweet beyond earthly degree, 
Out in the soft evening air 

Only, yes, only with thee ! 

II. 

Oft, when the world, stilly dreaming, 
Wrapp'd in the mantle of Night, 
278 



S/A' TRISTRAM'S SONG. 

Sees not the stars that are beaming 

Numberless, glorious, and bright, 
Feels not elate from the gleaming 
Moon and her tremulous light; 
Darling! thy smile to me seems 
Blent with the beautiful sight. 
Filling my heart with its beams. 
Waking a purer delight. 



III. 

Come while the breath of the clover 

Floats from the sweet sunny dell ; 
Come, while the forest-trees over 

Sound their aeolian shell ; 
Lead me, O loveliest rover ! 

Charm'd by thy magical spell, 
Where thou art wont to repair, — 

Lead where the wild-flowers dwell, 
Lilies that cannot compare 

With the white hands that impel. 



79 



28o -^"^^ TRISTRAM'S SONG. 

. IV. 

Bitter howe'er be the hour, 

All is delight when we meet ; 
Life, with its sunshine and shower, 

Lost in the tread of thy feet, 
In the soft step that the flower 

Rises from under complete, — 
Lost in thy presence, thy charms, 

In the heart's flutter and beat — 
Kisses — entwining of arms — 

Almost with heaven replete ! 



A LOVER'S LOVE-BALLAD. 



Dear Molly, you're sweet, and you know it,- 
Your lips seem to pout for a kiss ; 

You're pretty — and like well to show it ! 
You wcre/^/r if it were not for tliis. 

The fact is, my dear, you're too saucy — 
You think you're the empress of beaux ! 

You fancy your tresses, so glossy. 

Were made to enchain them like foes. 

But you know just as well as I tell you 
(Now, please don't begin to say nay !) 

You, at times, can ctidurc a beau ; — well, you 
Are a woman, — she fails in this way. — 

281 



282 A LOVER'S LOVE-BALLAD. 

For convenience, you little deceiver, 
You wore me around like a glove ; 

I was troubled sometimes with a fever 
And headache, — it might have been love : 

But your vows are now hopelessly broken, — 
There's Jenkens he calls you his dear : 

Alas ! my poor heart is not oaken ; 
Ah me, I'm dissolved in a tear ! 

But, Molly, I think I'm not dying; — 
There'll ne'er be a lack of sweet girls 

So artlessly, innocently trying 
To entangle a beau in their curls. 

Now, Molly, my sweetest, please luon't you ? 

You know you were made to be kiss'd ; 
Good-by, then, my darling, — O, don't you 

Imagine this once will be miss'd! 



SONNETS. 



=S3 



ON A DESERTED COTTAGE 



IN THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. 



Go on. — Ilcrc let mc linger for a space. 
Ah me, yon cottage in this mountain dell 
Was once more homelike ; busy footsteps fell 
Upon its floors. Past time steals back apace ; 
And, by yon fireside, smile a father's face, 

A mother's, son's, and daughter's ; — who could 

tell 
How beauteous is this maid ? The very spell 
Of this wild scene, the mountain streamlet's 
grace, 
Are in her eyes and motions ! Blessed spot — 
* Peace, beauty, love, and innocence are there. 
25 285 



286 ON A DESERTED COTTAGE. 

Hark, happy laughter rings within the cot: 
A girlish voice now hums a merry air. 
Alas ! I dream ; or dead or far away 
Are all those hearts — the cottage in decay. 



ON THE DEATH OF ADA. 



Ada, shall I behold thcc nevermore ? 

Art thou, indeed, to Death forever wed ? 

Sometimes I scarce believe thy spirit fled : — 

Forgetful, oft, I linger at the door 
To hear thee sweetly singii]g, as of yore. 

Then dreadful is the truth — that thou art dead ! 

Philosophy the bitter tears I shed 

Cannot assuage with all its vaunted lore — 
Vain comforter! that mocks the couch of death. 

Were't mine to die, I would not fate bewail ; 

But, oh, what consolation can avail 
When thou art in the grave bereft of breath ? 

Alas ! the end of earthly love — to know 



>87 



ON READING SHELLEY. 



The poet true need doubt not his reward. 
To him is given the gift of second sight ; 
He half-perceives the presence of the bright 
Invisible angels ; wondrously accord 

His thoughts with Nature; he becomes the ward 
Of^ heavenly Beauty, whose inspiring light 
Dwells in him, though he wanders in the night 
Of sorrow; he is Nature's truest lord. 

When those who dwell around him all have pass'd 
From life to death, and ravenous decay 
Has wasted all their petty works and cast 

Oblivion endless o'er their names, — his lay 
Shall live in many a heart unto the last, 
His memory growing greener day by day. 
288 



ADIEU TO LIFE. 



WHEN. SEVERELY WOUNDED, I WAS LYING IN 
A FOREST. HELPLESS AND IN EXPECTATION 
OF DEATH. 

From the German ok K«)Rner. 

My pale lips quiver; — how my wound doth burn ! 

By my spent heart, now fluttering faint and low, 

I feel my life is ended here below. 

God! 'tis thy will; — resign'd to Thee I turn. 
What golden prospects I did aye discern — 

The beauteous dreams change to a dirge of woe. 

Courage ! — There dwells within my heart, I 
know, 

That which shall deathless live beyond that 

bourne, 

25* 289 



2Q0 ADIEU TO LIFE. 

With all that was so sacred here to me, 

For which I burn'd with restless, youthful fire, 
Whether I call'd it love or liberty ! 

But, lo, above me bends an angel bright; — 
Soft airs — as now my senses slow expire — 
Upbear me to th' aurora-tinted height ! 



TO 



Though well I know the West is not a land 
Where one may prosper by poetic lore — 
For here mankind, to Mammon given o'er, 
But worship gold, and toil with greedy hand, 

Nor know that by each zephyr soft are fann'd 
Bright Muses' tresses, beauteous as of yore, — 
Yet, I shall cull sweet roses, as before, 
Content to scorn the mercenary band. — 

What, did I say that none, here, love the song 
Of Shakspeare and the rest? — O, no ! for thou 
Dost feel their power; thou dost perceive the 
birth 

And death of beauty in the world — dost long 
To quaff th' ideal nectarous. Ilaply, now, 
Thou feel'st what Mammon cannot feel on earth. 

291 



ON A FAVORITE CAT NAMED DON 

JUAN. 



" Don Juan was a bachelor of arts, 

And parts, and hearts," — I think, thus sings the 

poet ; 
And as for my cat Juan, you would know it 
E'en at a glance — to see his pranks and starts, 

As round my legs and o'er my lap he darts, 
Proud of the very ways he has to show it ! 
Whate'er a studious cat can master, lo, it 
Is known to him — a lad of brilliant parts : 

And, when he hies him forth at close of day 
To bask him in his lady's loving eye. 
And round about with all their friends they stray 

Carousing over fence and housetop high, 
Their nightly revelry reminds me truly 
Of amorous Juan and his Donna Julia. 
292 



NOTES. 



295 



NOTES. 



Page 17. 

Within a stwibre, wi/d fiord 
The Viking built a dragon fleet. 
The Norsemen called their barks Dragons and Serpents, 
perhaps because they were embellished with rude carvings 
representing dragons and other monsters. — V.Michelet's 
" France," b. ii. ch. iii. 



Page 19. 

The giants dire that lived of yo7'e, 

That, tiirn'd to stone, through murky sky 
Scowl downward with the look they wore. 
"We have just passed the Arctic circle, at a singular 
island, rising in the form of a giant horseman from the 
waters. The back of his mantle is the mountain-side, and 
the crags and cliffs make the horse's head and ears, and the 
rider's hand. His head was at first veiled angrily in mist; 

295 



296 



NOTES. 



but as we passed, a whiff carried it away, and a grand, 
calm face, like the face of the Sphinx, stood out, looking 
solemnly up to the stormy sky. The effect was mysterious 

and wonderful One can imagine how many a 

fisher-boat's crew has watched anxiously and superstitiously 
the head of the giant rider, and, though Christian, has 
muttered a prayer against Jumala or the Trolls." — Brace's 
" Norse-Folk," p. 67. 



Page 33. 

ah, why forsake 

The Norse, the fittest for the sea ? 
It is said that the old Norse had one hundred and fifty 
words to signify the sea in its different aspects. 



Page 84. 

these and the thousand 

All-nameless charms that, i7itermmgling, ble?id, 
Forming the whole, are all how beautiful — 
How beautiful I 

" Beautiful ! 
How beautiful is all this visible world !" 

" Manfred," Act I. Scene II. 



NOTES. 

Page 112. 
The tJiousand voices that from every brake, etc. 
" Es dringen die Bliithen 

Aus jedem Zvveig, 
Und tausend Stimmen 
Aus dem Gestniuch." — Goethe. 



297 



Page 113. 

While o'er their heads the mapW s tasselly blooms 
Crijnson the twigs. 
The maple here referred to [Acer rubru?n) is commonly 
known as the red or swamp maple. The flowers of this 
species are mostly scarlet or crimson, while the flowers of 
the other maples are generally greenish or of a pale or 
greenish yellow. 



Page 138. 

Far had they come from where the wave 

Of clear Scioto, gently flow i7ig, etc. 

At the time the incidents related in this poem are supposed 

to have occurred, the Shawnees lived on the Scioto River. 

The distance between the scene of the tale — the Moxahala 

—and the Scioto, was considered by both the wandering 

26 



298 NOTES. 

Indian and the tireless backwoodsman as but a moderate 
ramble of a few days. 



Page 140. 

Ye braves ! when he, 
My Father, yon bright Sun, etc. 
This thought and that in the seventeenth line below, are 
taken from the words of the heroic Tecumseh, who was, in 
later times, the Chief of the Shawnees. It was at a coun- 
cil held at Vincennes, in 1810, by General Harrison when 
governor of the Northwest Territory ; the object of the 
council was to insure peace between the Shawnees and the 
territorial government. Tecumseh made his appearance 
at the appointed time ; and General Harrison, as governor, 
invited him to come forward and take a seat by his side, 
saying that it was the wish of their "Great Father," the 
President of the United States, that he should do so. On 
hearing this, Tecumseh stretched himself to his greatest 
height, and, looking haughtily around over the throng 
assembled at the council, said in tones that could be dis- 
tinctly heard to its farthest extremities : " My Father ? — The 
Sun is viy Father and the Earth is my mother — and on her 
bosom I will recline." He and his warriors immediately 
stretched themselves on the green grass. It is said the 



NOTES. 



299 



effect was wonderful ; for some moments there was pro- 
found silence. The above may be found related at length 
in Barber's " History of the Western States," pp. 160 and 
161, where it is cited from Law's "Colonial History of 
Post Vinccnnes." 



Page 153. 

thoit mak'sf to roll 

T/ir suns and worlds through heaven, etc. 
This is an allusion to the last line of La Divhia Corn- 
media : 

" L'amor che muove '1 Sole e I'altre stelle." 



Page 167. 



7)Ut, suddenly, ho7vl and horrid yell, etc. 
In the year 1763, Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawas, who 
had been an ally of the French, secretly formed a great 
confederation of the Algonquin tribes to exterminate the 
English west of the Alleghany mountains. The tribes that 
united in this memorable struggle were the Shawnees, Ot- 
tawas, Miamies, Chippcwas, Wyandots, Pottawatomies, 
Mississaguies, Ontagamics, Winncbagoes, and Scnecas. 
So artfully had Pontiac matured his plans, that, until the 



^00 



NOTES. 



first blow was struck in June, none of the commanders of 
the western forts had the least suspicion of the impending 
danger. During the summer he captured all the posts west 
of Oswego, New York, except Detroit, Fort Pitt, and Nia- 
gara. Thus, through the greater part of summer and the 
following autumn, the whole of the Northwest was exposed 
to the ravages of the Indians ; and they failed not to take 
advantage of the opportunity. The massacre, and the 
burning of the cabin on the shore of Lake Seneca, New 
York, are supposed to have happened in the fall of that 
year. See Lossing's " History of the United States," part 
iv. ch. xii., etc. 



Page 185. 
Ah y yes / give 7ne the rustic cot, 
The meadow, wold, and garde Ji plot, — 
The glory of a lowly lot, 

Where Peace may come and build her ?test / 
Although the passage is so well known, I cannot forbear 
quoting, in connection with the above lines, a paragraph 
from a letter of Mr. Murdoch to Joseph Cooper Walker, 
describing the house in which the poet Burns was born. 
Speaking of the father of the poet, he says : " In this parish 
[Alloway], on the roadside, a Scotch mile and a half from 



NOTES. 301 



the town of Ayr, and half a mile from the bridge of Doon, 
William Burnes took a piece of land, consisting of about 
seven acres ; part of which he laid out in garden ground, 
and part of which he kept to graze a cow, etc., still con- 
tinuing in the employ of Provost Ferguson. Upon this 
little farm was erected a humble dwelling, of which William 
Burnes was the architect. It was, with the exception of a 
little straw, literally a tabernacle of clay. In this mean 
cottage, of which I myself was at times an inhabitant, I 
really believe there dwelt a larger portion of content than 
in any palace in Europe. The ' Cotter's Saturday Night' 
will give some idea of the temper and manners that pre- 
vailed there." 



Page 195. 

O 7io7u sweet were a Letheaii vieasure 
To deadeji the memory of Pleasure 
When the bright-tiiited bubble is burst ! 
This sentiment is ever new, yet it was old when Dante 
wrote the oft-quoted lines : 

" nessun maggior dolore, 

Che ricordarsi del tempo fclice 
Nella miseria " 



302 NOTES. 



Page 227. 

Watching many an island, slowly 

Floating 'neath tJi o'e?-shado'wing mountains 
O'er the lake, etc. 

At the time of the conquest by Cortes, the lakes in the 
valley of Anahuac were covered with floating-islands, 
bearing their rich freight of fruits and flowers and drift- 
ing "like enchanted isles over the waters." Describing 
the march of the Spaniards to the City of Mexico, Prescott 
says : " They were amazed, also, by the sight of the chi- 
nampas, or floating-gardens, — those wandering islands of 
verdure, to which we shall have occasion to return here- 
after, — teeming with flowers and vegetables, and moving 
like rafts over the waters." And again exclaims the same 
beautiful writer: "How gay and picturesque must have 
been the aspect of the lake [Tezcuco] in those days, with 
its shining cities, and flowering islets rocking, as it were, at 
anchor on the fair bosom of its waters !" 

Though the wall of mountains surrounding the valley of 

Anahuac is leagues distant from the City of Mexico, yet, 

through the clear atmosphere of that elevated plateau the 

mountains seemed to the Aztecs very near, looming over 

- -c. 
the orchards, maize-fields, and lakes below. 



NOTES. 303 



Page 228. 
While her fiiigeys idly braided 
Garlands sweet of Jlowers tinfadcd. 
The love of flowers was universal among the Aztecs. 
They used them in their religious ceremonies, and cul- 
tivated them in beautiful and extensive gardens when, in 
Europe, their cultivation was almost unknown. Their flat 
house-tops were often so arranged as to appear a tangled 
profusion of flowers of all colors, rivalling in beauty the 
hanging-gardens of Babylon. See Prescott's " Conquest 
of Mexico." 



THE END. 



•C /* 



